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THE ASCENT OF MAN.

I- I L

THE LOWELL LECTURES

ON

THE ASCENT OF MAN

HENRY DRUMMOND,

LL.D., F. R. S. E., F. G. S.

SEVENTH EDITION.

NEW YORK
JAMES POTT & CO., PUBLISHERS

FOURTH AVENUE AND 22D STREET

- ^^SfSARY
ILEGE

COPYRIGHTED 1894

BY

HENRY DRUMMOND.

Press of J. J. Little & Co.
Astor Place, New York

PREFACE.

|: THE more I think of it," says Ruskin, " I find this
conclusion more impressed upon me — that the greatest
thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see
something, and tell what it saw in a plain way." In
these pages an attempt is made to " tell in a plain
way " a few of the things which Science is now seeing
with regard to the Ascent of Man. Whether these
.seeings are there at all is another matter. But, even
if visions, every thinking mind, through whatever
medium, should look at them. What Science has to
say about himself is of transcendent interest to Man,
and the practical bearings of this theme are coming
to be more vital than any on the field of knowledge.
The thread which binds the facts is, it is true, but a
hypothesis. As the theory, nevertheless, with which
at present all scientific work is being done, it is as-
sumed in every page that follows.

Though its stand-point is Evolution and its subject
Man, this book is far from being designed to prove
that Man has relations, compromising or otherwise,
with lower animals. Its theme is Ascent, noC Descent,
Jt is a Story, not an Argument. And Evolution, in

PREFACE.

the narrow sense in which it is often used when ap
plied to Man, plays little part in the drama outlined
here. So far as the general scheme of Evolution is
introduced — and in the Introduction and elsewhere
this is done at length — the object is the important one
of pointing out how its nature has been misconceived,
indeed how its greatest factor has been overlooked in
almost all contemporary scientific thinking. Evo
lution was given to the modern world out of focus,
was first seen by it out of focus, and has remained
out of focus to the present hour. Its general basis
has never been re-examined since the time of Mr.
Darwin; and not only such speculative sciences as
Teleology, but working sciences like Sociology, have
been led astray by a fundamental omission. An Evo
lution Theory drawn to scale, and with the lights and
shadows properly adjusted— adjusted to the whole
truth and reality of Nature and of Man— is needed at
present as a standard for modern thought; and though
a reconstruction of such magnitude is not here pre
sumed, a primary object of these pages is to supply
at least the accents for such a scheme.

Beyond an attempted re-adjustment of the accents
there is nothing here for the specialist — except, it may
be, the reflection of his own work. Nor, apart from
Teleology, is there anything for the theologian. The
limitations of a lecture-audience made the treatment
of such themes as might appeal to him impossible;
while owing to the brevity of the course, the Ascent
had to be stopped at a point where all the higher in
terest begins. All that the present volume covers is
the Ascent of Man, the Individual, during the earlier
stages of his evolution. It is a study in embryos, 117

PREPACK vil

rudiments, in installations ; the scene is the primeval
forest; the date, the world's dawn. Tracing his rise
as far as Family Life, this history does not even
follow him into the Tribe ; and as it is only then that
social and moral life begins in earnest, no formal dis
cussion of these high themes occurs. All the higher
forces and phenomena with which the sciences of
Psychology, Ethics, and Theology usually deal come
on the workT's stage at a later date, and no one need
be surprised if the semi-savage with whom we leave
off is found wanting in so many of the higher poten
tialities of a human being.

The Ascent of Mankind, as distinguished from the
Ascent of the Individual, was orginally summarized in
one or two closing lectures, but this stupendous sub
ject would require a volume for itself, and these frag
ments have been omitted for the present. Doubtless-
it may disappoint some that at the close of all the be
wildering vicissitudes outlined here, Man should ap
pear, after all, so poor a creature. But the great lines-
of his youth are the lines of his maturity, and it is-
only by studying these, in themselves and in what
they connote, that the nature of Evolution and the-
quality of Human Progress can be perceived.

HENRY DRUMMONIX

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CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

PAGE

I. EVOLUTION IN GENERAL ........................ 1

II. THE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES ---- 11

III. WHY WAS EVOLUTION THE METHOD CHOSEN ..... 36

IV. EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY .................... 41

CHAPTER I.
THE ASCENT OF THE BODY

59

CHAPTER II.

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY. . 77

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER III.

PAGE

THE ARREST OF THE BODY.

CHAPTER IV.
THE DAWN OF MIND.., . 119

CHAPTER Y.
THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE.. . 153

CHAPTER VI.

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. . , 189

CHAPTER VII.

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. . . .215

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VIII.

PAGE

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER 267

CHAPTER IX.

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER . . .292

CHAPTER X.
INVOLUTION 319

INTRODUCTION.
I.

EVOLUTION IN GENERAL.

THE last romance of Science, the most daring it has
ever tried to pen, is the Story of the Ascent of Man.
Withheld from all the wistful eyes that have gone be
fore, whose reverent ignorance forbade their wisest
minds to ask to see it, this final volume of Natural
History has begun to open with our century's close.
In the monographs of His and Minot, the Embryology
of Man has already received a just expression; Darwin
and Haeckel have traced the origin of the Animal-
Body; the researches of Romanes mark a beginning
with the Evolution of Mind ; Herbert Spencer has
elaborated theories of the development of Morals ;
Edward Caird of the Evolution of Religion. Supple
menting the contributions of these authorities, verify
ing, criticising, combating, rebutting, there works a
multitude of others who have devoted their lives to
the same rich problems, and already every chapter of
the bewildering story has found its editors.

Yet, singular though the omission may seem, no
connected outline of this great drama has yet been

INTRODUCTION.

given us. These researches, preliminary reconnais
sances though they be, are surely worthy of being
looked upon as a whole. No one can say that this
multitude of observers is not in earnest, nor their
work honest, nor their methods competent to the last
powers of science. Whatever the uncertainty of the
field, it is due to these pioneer minds to treat their
labor with respect. What they see in the unexplored
land in which they travel belongs to the world. By
just such methods, and by just such men, the map of
the world of thought is filled in — here from the trac
ing up of some great river, there from a bearing taken
roughly in a darkened sky, yonder from a sudden glint
of the sun on a far-off mountain-peak, or by a swift
induction of an adventurous mind from a momentary
glimpse of a natural law. So knowledge grows ; and
in a century which has added to the sum of human
learning more than all the centuries that arc past, it is
not to be conceived that some further revelation
should not await us on the highest themes of all.

The day is forever past when science need apolo
gize for treating Man as an object of natural research.
Hamlet's " being of large discourse, looking before and
after " is withal a part of Nature, and can neither be
made larger nor smaller, anticipate less nor prophesy
less, because we investigate, and perhaps discover, the
secret of his past. And should that past be proved to
be related in undreamed-of ways to that of all other
things in Nature, " all other things " have that to gain
by the alliance which philosophy and theology for
centuries have striven to win for them. Every step
in the proof of the oneness in a universal evolutionary
process of this divine humanity of ours is a step in the

EVOLUTION IN GENERAL. 3

proof of the divinity of all lower things. And what is
of infinitely greater moment, each footprint discovered
in the Ascent of Man is a guide to the step to be
taken next. To discover the rationale of social prog
ress is the ambition of this age. There is an extraor
dinary human interest abroad about this present
world itself, a yearning desire, not from curious but
for practical reasons, to find some light upon the
course ; and as the goal comes nearer the eagerness
passes into suspense to know the shortest and the
quickest road to reach it. Hence the Ascent of Man
is not only the noblest problem which science can ever
study, but the practical bearings of this theme are
great beyond any other on the roll of knowledge.

Now that the first rash rush of the evolutionary
invasion is past, and the sins of its youth atoned for
by sober concession, Evolution is seen to be neither
more nor less than the story of creation as told by
those who know it best. " Evolution," says Mr.
Huxley, " or development is at present employed in
biology as a general name for the history of the steps
by which any living being has acquired the morpho
logical and the physiological characters which dis
tinguish it." l Though applied specifically to plants
and animals this definition expresses the chief sense
in which Evolution is to be used scientifically at
present. We shall use the word, no doubt, in others
of its many senses ; but after all the blood spilt, Evo
lution is simply " history," a " history of steps," a
" general name," for the history of the steps by which
the world has come to be what it is. According to
this general definition, the story of Evolution is nar-
1 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th Ed.

INTR OD UCTION.

rative. It may be wrongly told ; it may be colored^
exaggerated, over or understated like the record of
any other set of facts ; it may be told with a theo
logical bias or with an anti -theological bias ; theories
of the process may be added by this thinker or by
that ; but these are not of the substance of the story.
Whether history is told by a Gibbon or a Green the
facts remain, and whether Evolution be told by a
Haeckel or a Wallace we accept the narrative so far
as it is a rendering of Nature, and no more. It is
true, before this story can be fully told, centuries still
must pass. At present there is not a chapter of the
record that is wholly finished. The manuscript is
already worn with erasures, the writing is often
blurred, the very language is uncouth and strange.
Yet even now the outline of a continuous story is be
ginning to appear — a story whose chief credential lies
in the fact that no imagination of man could have de
signed a spectacle so wonderful, or worked out a plot
at once so intricate and so transcendently simple.

This story will be outlined here partly for the story
and partly for a purpose. A historian dare not have
a prejudice, but he cannot escape a purpose — the pur
pose, conscious or unconscious, of unfolding the pur
pose which lies behind the facts which he narrates.
The interest of a drama — the authorship of the play
apart — is in the players, their character, their motives,
and the tendency of their action. It is impossible to
treat these players as automata. Even if automata,
those in the audience are not. Hence, where inter
pretation seems lawful, or comment warranted by the
facts, neither will be withheld.

To give an account of Evolution, it need scarcely be

EVOLUTION IN GENERAL.

remarked, is not to account for it. No living thinker
has yet found it possible to account for Evolution.
Mr. Herbert Spencer's famous definition of Evolution
as "a change from an indefinite incoherent homogene
ity to a definite coherent heterogeneity through contin
uous differentiations and integrations" —the formula
of which the Contemporary Eeviewer remarked that
"the universe may well have heaved a sigh of relief
when, through the cerebration of an eminent thinker,
it had been delivered of this account of itself"— is
simply a summary of results, and throws no light,
though it is often supposed to do so, upon ultimate
causes. While it is true, as Mr. Wallace affirms in his
latest work, that "Descent with modification is now
universally accepted as the order of nature in the
organic world," there is everywhere at this moment
the most disturbing uncertainty as to how the Ascent
even of species has been brought about. The attacks
on the Darwinian theory from the outside were never
so keen as are the controversies now raging in scien
tific circles, over the fundamental principles of Dar
winism itself. On at least two main points— sexual
selection and the origin of the higher mental charac
teristics of man— Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, co-dis
coverer with Darwin of the principle of Natural Selec
tion though he be, directly opposes his colleague.
The powerful attack of Weismann on the Darwinian
assumption of the inheritability of acquired characters
has opened one of the liveliest controversies of recent
years, and the whole field of science is hot with con
troversies and discussions. In his " Germ-Plasm," the
German naturalist believes himself to have finally
1 Data of Ethics, p. 65.

INTRODUCTION.

disposed of both Darwin's " gemmules " and Herbert
Spencer's "primordial units," while Eimer breaks a
lance with Weismann in defence of Darwin, and
Herbert Spencer replies for himself, assuring us that
"either there has been inheritance of acquired charac
ters or there has been no evolution."

It is the greatest compliment to Darwinism that it
should have survived to deserve this era of criticism.
Meantime all prudent men can do no other than hold
their judgment in suspense both as to that specific
theory of one department of Evolution which is called
Darwinism, and as to the factors and causes of Evolu
tion itself. No one asks more of Evolution at present
than permission to use it as a working theory. Un
doubtedly there are cases now before Science where it
is more than theory — the demonstration from Yale,
for instance, of the Evolution of the Horse; and from
Steinheim of the transmutation of Planorbis. In these
cases the missing links have come in one after an
other, and in series so perfect, that the evidence for
their evolution is irresistible. "On the evidence of
Palaeontology," says Mr. Huxley in the JEncydopcedia
Eritannica, " the evolution of many existing forms of
animal life from their predecessors is no longer an hy
pothesis but an historical fact." And even as to Man,
most naturalists agree with Mr. Wallace who "fully
accepts Mr. Darwin's conclusion as to the essential
identity of Man's bodily structure with that of the
higher mammalia and his descent from some ancestral
form common to man and the anthropoid apes," for
" the evidence of such descent appears overwhelming
and conclusive." 1 But as to the development of the
I Darwinism, p.. 451.

EVOLUTION IN GENERAL.

whole Man it is sufficient for the present to rank it as
a theory, no matter how impressive the conviction be
that it is more. Without some hypothesis no work
can ever be done, and, as every one knows, many of
the greatest contributions to human knowledge have
been made by the use of theories either seriously
imperfect or demonstrably false. This is the age of
the evolution of Evolution. All thoughts that the
Evolutionist works with, all theories and generaliza
tions, have been themselves evolved and are now
being evolved. Even were his theory perfected its
first lesson would be that it was itself but a phase of
the Evolution of further opinion, no more fixed than a
species, no more final than the theory which it dis
placed. Of all men the Evolutionist, by the very
nature of his calling, the mere tools of his craft, his
understanding of his hourly shifting place in this
always moving and ever more mysterious world, must
be humble, tolerant, and undogmatic.

These, nevertheless, are cold words with which to
speak of a Vision — for Evolution is after all a
Vision — which is revolutionizing the world of Nature
and of thought, and, within living memory, has opened
up avenues into the past and vistas into the future
such as science has never witnessed before. While
many of the details of the theory of Evolution are in
the crucible of criticism, and while the field of modern
science changes with such rapidity that in almost
every department the text-books of ten years ago are
obsolete to-day, it is fair to add that no one of these
changes, nor all of them together, have touched the
general theory itself except to establish its strength,
its value, and its universality. Even more remarkable

8 INTRODUCTION.

than the rapidity of its conquest is the authority with
which the doctrine of development has seemed to
speak to the most authoritative minds of our time.
Of those who are in the front rank, of those who by
their knowledge have, by common consent, the right to
speak, there are scarcely any who do not in some form
employ it in working and in thinking. Authority
may mean little; the world has often been mistaken;
but when minds so different as those of Charles
Darwin and of T. II. Green, of Herbert Spencer and of
Robert Browning, build half the labors of their life on
this one law, it is impossible, and especially in the ab
sence of any other even competing principle at the pres
ent hour, to treat it as a baseless dream. Only the
peculiar nature of this great generalization can account
for the extraordinary enthusiasm of this acceptance.
Evolution has done for Time what Astronomy has
done for Space. As sublime to the reason us the
Science of the Stars, as overpowering to the imagina
tion, it has thrown the universe into a fresh perspec
tive, and given the human mind a new dimension.
Evolution involves not so much a change of opinion as
a change in man's whole view of the world and of life.
It is not the statement of a mathematical proposition
which men are called upon to declare true or false. It
is a method of looking upon Nature. Science for cent
uries devoted itself to the cataloguing of facts and
the discovery of laws. Each worker toiled in his own
little place— the geologist in his quarry, the botanist
in his garden, the biologist in his laboratory, the
astronomer in his observatory, the historian "in his
library, the archaeologist in his museum. Suddenly
these workers looked up ; they spoke to one another j

EVOLUTION IN GENERAL.

they had each discovered a law ; they whispered its
name. It was Evolution. Henceforth their work was
one, science was one, the world was one, and mind,
which discovered the oneness, was one.

Such being the scope of the theory, it is essential that
for its interpretation this universal character be rec
ognized, and no phenomenon in nature or in human
nature be left out of the final reckoning. It is equally
clear that in making that interpretation we must begin
with the final product, Man. If Evolution can be
proved to include Man, the whole course of Evolution
and the whole scheme of Nature from that moment
assume a new significance. The beginning must then
be interpreted from the end, not the end from the
beginning. An engineering workshop is unintelligible
until we reach the room where the completed engine
stands. Everything culminates in that final product,
is contained in it, is explained by it. The Evolution of
Man is also the complement and corrective of all other
forms of Evolution. From this height only is there a
full view, a true perspective, a consistent world. The
whole mistake of naturalism has been to interpret
Nature from the stand-point of the atom — to study
the machinery which drives this great moving world
simply as machinery, forgetting that the ship has any
passengers, or the passengers any captain, or the
captain any course. It is as^great a mistake, on
the other hand, for tnetheologian to separate off
the ship from the passengers as for the naturalist to
separate off the passengers from the ship. It is he
who cannot include Man among the links of Evolution
who has greatly to fear the theory of development.
In his jealousy for that religion which seems to him

10 INTEOD UCTION.

higher than science, he removes at once the rational
basis from religion and the legitimate crown from
science, forgetting that in so doing he offers to the
world an unnatural religion and an inhuman science.
The cure for all the small mental disorders which
spring up around restricted applications of Evolution
is to extend it fearlessly in all directions as far as the
mind can carry it and the facts allow, till each man,
working at his subordinate part, is compelled to own,
and adjust himself to, the whole.

If the theological mind be called upon to make this
expansion, the scientific man must be asked to enlarge
his view in another direction. If he insists upon
including Man in his scheme of Evolution, he must
see to it that he include the whole Man. For him
at least no form of Evolution is scientific, or is to be
considered, which does not include the whole Man,
and all that is in Man, and all the work and thought
and life and aspiration of Man. The great moral facts,
the moral forces so far as they are proved to exist, the
moral consciousness so far as it is real, must come
within its scope. Human History must be as much a
part of it as Natural History. The social and religious
forces must no more be left outside than the forces
of gravitation or of life. The reason why the natural
ist does not usually include these among the factors in
Evolution is not oversight, but undersight. Some
times, no doubt, he may take at their word those who
assure him that Evolution has nothing to do with
those higher things, but the main reason Is simply that
his work does not lie on the levels where those forces
come into play. The specialist is not to be blamed for
this ; limitation is his strength. But when the special-

THE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES. 11

ist proceeds to reconstruct the universe from his little
corner of it, and especially from his level of it, he not
only injures science and philosophy, but may fatally
mislead his neighbors. The man who is busy with
the stars will never come across Natural Selection, yet
surely must he allow for Natural Selection in his con-
struction of the world as a whole. He who works
among star-fish will encounter little of Mental Evolu
tion, yet will he not deny that it exists. The stars
have voices, but there are other voices ; the star-fishes
have activities, but there are other activities. Man,
body, soul, spirit, are not only to be considered, but
are first to be considered in any theory of the world.
You cannot describe the life of kings, or arrange their
kingdoms, from the cellar beneath the palace. " Art,"
as Browning reminds us,

" Must fumble for the whole, once fixing on a part,
However poor, surpass the fragment, and aspire '
To reconstruct thereby the ultimate entire." ^

II.

THE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES.

But it is not so much in ignoring Man that evo
lutionary philosophy has gone astray ; for of that
error it has seriously begun to repent. What we
have now to charge against it, what is a main object
of these pages to point out, is that it has misread
Nature herself. In "fixing on a part" whereby to
"reconstruct the ultimate," it has fixed upon apart

12 INTRODUCTION.

which is not the most vital part, and the reconstruc
tions, therefore, have come to be wholly out of focus.
Fix upon the wrong " part," and the instability of the
fabric built upon it is a foregone conclusion. Now,
although reconstructions of the cosmos in the light of
Evolution are the chief feature of the science of our
time, in almost no case does even a hint of the true
scientific stand-point appear to be perceived. And
although it anticipates much that we should prefer
to leave untouched until it appears in its natural set
ting, the gravity of the issues makes it essential to
summarize the whole situation now.

The root of the error lies, indirectly rather than
directly, with Mr. Darwin. In 1859, through the
publication of the Origin of Species, he offered to the
world what purported to be the final clue to the
course of living Nature. That clue was the principle
of the Struggle for Life. After the years of storm
and stress which follow the intrusion into the world
of all great thoughts, this principle was universally
accepted as the key to all the sciences which deal
with life. So ceaseless was Mr. Darwin's emphasis
upon this factor, and so masterful his influence, that,
after the first sharp conflict, even the controversy died
down. With scarce a challenge the Struggle for Life
became accepted by the scientific world as the govern
ing factor in development, and the drama of Evolution
was made to hinge entirely upon its action. It
became the "part" from which science henceforth
went on " to reconstruct the whole," and biology,
sociology, and teleology, were built anew on this
foundation.

That the Struggle for Life has been a prominent

THE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES. 13

actor in the drama is certain. Further research has
only deepened the impression of the magnitude and
universality of this great and far-reaching law. But
that it is the sole or even the main agent in the
process of Evolution must be denied. Creation is
a drama, and no drama was ever put upon the
stage with only one actor. The Struggle for Life is
the " Villain " of the piece, no more ; and, like the
"Villain" in the play, its chief function is to re-act
upon the other players for higher ends. There is, in
point of fact, a second factor which one might venture
to call the Struggle for the Life of Others, which plays
an equally prominent part. Even in the early stages
of development, its contribution is as real, while in the
world's later progress — under the name of Altruism —
it assumes a sovereignty before which the earlier
Struggle sinks into insignificance. That this second
form of Struggle should all but have escaped the
notice of Evolutionists is the more unaccountable
since it arises, like the first, out of those fundamental
functions of living organisms which it is the main
business of biological science to investigate. The
functions discharged by all living things, plant and
animal, are two 1 in number. The first is Nutrition,
the second is Reproduction. The first is the basis of
the Struggle for Life; the second, of the Struggle for
the Life of Others. These two functions run their
parallel course — or spiral course, for they con
tinuously intertwine — from the very dawn of life.
They are involved in the fundamental nature of proto-

1 There is a third function— that of Co-relation— but, to avoid
confusing the immediate issue, this may remain at present in the
background.

14 INTR OD UCTION.

plasm itself. They affect the entire round of life ; they
determine the whole morphology of living things ; in a
sense they are life. Yet, in constructing the fabric of
Evolution, one of these has been taken, the other left.

Partly because of the limitations of its purely physi
cal name, and partly because it has never been worked
out as an evolutionary force, the function of Kepro-
duction will require to be introduced to the reader in
some detail. But to realize its importance or even to
understand it, it will be necessary to recall to our
minds the supreme place which function generally
holds in the economy of life.

Life to an animal or to a Man is not a random series
of efforts. Its course is set as rigidly as the courses
of the stars. All its movements and changes, its
apparent deflections and perturbations are guided by
unalterable purposes; its energies and caprices defi
nitely controlled. What controls it are its functions.
These and these only determine life ; living out these
is life. Trace back any one, or all, of the countless
activities of an animal's life, and it will be found that
they are at bottom connected with one or other of
the two great functions which manifest themselves in
protoplasm. Take any organ of the body — hand or
foot, eye or ear, heart or lung — or any tissue of the
body — muscle or nerve, bone or cartilage — and it will
be found to be connected either with Nutrition or with
Reproduction. Just as everything about an engine,
every bolt, bar, valve, crank, lever, wheel, has some
thing to do with the work of that engine, everything
about an animal's body has something to do with the
work prescribed by those two functions. An animal,
or a Man, is a consistent whole, a rational production.

THE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES. 15

Now the rationale of living is revealed for us in proto
plasm. Protoplasm sets life its task. Living can only
be done along its lines. There start the channels in
which all life must run, and though the channels bi
furcate endlessly as time goes on, and though more life
and fuller is ever coursing through them, it can never
overflow the banks appointed from the beginning.

But this is not all. The activities even of the
higher life, though not qualitatively limited by the
lower, are determined by these same lines. Were
these facts only relevant in the domain of physiology,
they would be of small account in a study of the
Ascent of Man. But the more profoundly the Evo
lution of Man is investigated the more clearly is it
seen that the whole course of his development has
been conducted on this fundamental basis. Life, all
life, higher or lower, is an organic unity. Nature may
vary her effects, may introduce qualitative changes so
stupendous as to make their affinities with lower
things unthinkable, but she has never re-laid the
foundations of the world. Evolution began with
protoplasm and ended with Man, and all the way be
tween, the development has been a symmetry whose
secret lies in the two or three great crystallizing
forces revealed to us through this first basis.

Having realized the significance of the physiological
functions, let us now address ourselves to their mean
ing and connotations. The first, the function of
Nutrition, on which the Struggle for Life depends,
requires no explanation. Mr. Darwin was careful to
give to his favorite phrase, the Struggle for Life, a
wider meaning than that which associates it merely
with Nutrition j but this qualification seems largely to

16 JN TR OD UCTION.

have been lost sight of — to some extent even by him
self — and the principle as it stands to-day in scientific
and philosophical discussion is practically synony
mous with the Struggle for Food. As time goes on
this Struggle — at first a conflict with Nature and the
elements, sustained by hunger, and intensified by
competition — assumes many disguises, and is ulti
mately known in the modern world under the names
of War and Industry. In these later phases the early
function of protoplasm is obscured, but on the last
analysis, War and Industry — pursuits in which half
the world is now engaged — are seen to be simply its
natural developments.

The implications of the second function, Reproduc
tion, lie further from the surface. To say that Repro
duction is synonymous with the Struggle for the Life
of Others conveys at first little meaning, for the
physiological aspects of the function persist in. the
mind, and make even a glimpse of its true character
difficult. In two or three chapters in the text, the
implications of this function will be explained at
length, and the reader who is sufficiently interested in
the immediate problem, or who sees that there is here
something to be investigated, may do well to turn to
these at once. Suffice it for the moment to say that
the physiological aspects of the Struggle for the Life
of Others are so overshadowed even towards the close
of the Animal Kingdom by the psychical and ethical
that it is scarcely necessary to emphasize the former
at all. One's first and natural association with the
Struggle for the Life of Others is with something
done for posterity — in the plant the Struggle to pro
duce seeds, in the animal to beget young. But this is

THE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES. 17

a preliminary which, compared with what directly
and indirectly rises out of it, may be almost passed
over. The significant note is ethical, the development
of Other-ism as Altruism — its immediate and in
evitable outcome. Watch any higher animal at that
most critical of all hours — for itself, and for its species
— the hour when it gives birth to another creature
like itself. Pass over the purely physiological pro
cesses of birth ; observe the behavior of the animal-
mother in presence of the new and helpless life which
palpitates before her. There it lies, trembling in the
balance between life and death. Hunger tortures it ;
cold threatens it ; danger besets it ; its blind existence
hangs by a thread. There is the opportunity of
Evolution. There is an opening appointed in the
physical order for the introduction of a moral order.
If there is more in Nature than the selfish Struggle
for Life the secret can now be told. Hitherto, the
world belonged to the Food-seeker, the Self-seeker, the
Struggler for Life, the Father. Now is the hour of
the Mother. And, animal though she be, she rises to
her task. And that hour, as she ministers to her
young, becomes to her, and to the world, the hour of
its holiest birth.

Sympathy, tenderness, unselfishness, and the long
list of virtues which make up Altruism, are the direct
outcome and essential accompaniment of the repro
ductive process. Without some rudimentary mater
nal solicitude for the egg in the humblest forms of
life, or for the young among higher forms, the living
world would not only suffer, but would cease. For a
time in the life-history of every higher animal the
direct, personal, gratuitous, unrewarded help of an-
2

\S INTRODUCTION.

other creature is a condition of existence. Even in
the lowliest world of plants the labors of Maternity
begin, and the animal kingdom closes with the crea
tion of a class in which this function is perfected to
its last conceivable expression. The vicarious prin
ciple is shot through and through the whole vast web
of Nature; and if one actor has played a mightier
part than another in the drama of the past, it has
been self-sacrifice. What more has come into human
ity along the line of the Struggle for the Life of
Others will be shown later. But it is quite certain
that, of all the things that minister to the welfare and
good of Man, of all that make the world varied and
fruitful, of all that make society solid and interesting,
of all that make life beautiful and glad and worthy, by
far the larger part has reached us through the activi
ties of the Struggle for the Life of Others.

How grave the omission of this supreme factor from
our reckoning, how serious the effect upon our whole
view of nature, must now appear. Time was when
the science of Geology was interpreted exclusively in
terms of the action of a single force — fire. • Then
followed the theories of an opposing school who saw
all the earth's formations to be the result of water.
Any Biology, any Sociology, any Evolution, which is
based on a single factor, is as untrue as the old Geol
ogy. It is only when both the Struggle for Life and
the Struggle for the Life of Others are kept in view,
any scientific theory of Evolution is possible.
Combine them, contrast them, assign each its place,
allow for their inter-actions, and the scheme of Nature
may be worked out in terms of them to the last detail.
All along the line, through the whole course of the

THE MISSING FACTOR IN CUE RENT THEORIES. 19

development, these two functions act and react upon
one another ; and continually as they co-operate, to
produce a single result, their specific differences are
never lost.

The first, the Struggle for Life, is, throughout, the
Self-regarding function ; the second, the Other-regard
ing function. The first, in lower Nature, obeying the
law of self-preservation, devotes its energies to feed
itself ; the other, obeying the law of species-preserva
tion, to feed its young. While the first develops the
active virtues of strength and courage, the other lays
the basis for the passive virtues, sympathy, and love.
In the later world one seeks its end in personal ag
grandizement, the other in ministration. One begets
competition, self-assertion, war; the other unselfish
ness, self-effacement, peace. One is Individualism,
the other, Altruism.

To say that no ethical content can be put into the
discharge of either function in the earlier reaches of
Nature goes without saying. But the moment we
reach a certain height in the development, ethical
implications begin to arise. These, in the case of the
first, have been read into Nature, lower as well as
higher, with an exaggerated and merciless malevo
lence. The other side has received almost no expres
sion. The final result is a picture of Nature wholly
painted in shadow— a picture so dark as to be a chal
lenge to its Maker, an unanswered problem to philoso
phy, an abiding offence to the moral nature of Man.
The world has been held up to us as one great battle
field heaped with the slain, an Inferno of infinite suf
fering, a slaughter-house resounding with the cries of
a ceaseless agony.

20 INTRODUCTION.

Before this version of the tragedy, authenticated by
the highest names on the roll of science, humanity
was dumb, morality mystified, natural theology stulti
fied. A truer reading may not wholly relieve the
first, enlighten the second, or re-instate the third.
But it at least re-opens the inquiry ; and when all its
bearings come to be perceived, the light thrown upon
the field of Nature by the second factor may be more
impressive to reason than the apparent shadow of the
first to sense.

To relieve the strain of the position forced upon
ethics by the one-sided treatment of the process of
Evolution heroic attempts have been made. Some
have attempted to mitigate the amount of suffering it
involves, and assure us that, after all, the Struggle,
except as a metaphor, scarcely exists. "There is,"
protests Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, " good reason to
believe that the supposed ' torments ' and ' miseries '
of animals have little real existence, but are the reflec
tion of the amagined sensations of cultivated men and
women in similar circumstances ; and that the amount
of actual suffering caused by the Struggle for Exist
ence among animals is altogether insignificant." J Mr.
Huxley, on the other hand, will make no compromise.
The Struggle for Life to him is a portentous fact, un
mitigated and unexplained. No metaphors are strong
enough to describe the implacability of its sway.
" The moral indifference of nature " and " the un
fathomable injustice of the nature of things" every
where stare him in the face. " For his successful prog
ress as far as the savage state, Man has been largely
indebted to those qualities which he shares with the
1 Darwinism, p. 37.

THE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES. 21

ape and the tiger." l That stage reached, " for thou
sands and thousands of years, before the origin of the
oldest known civilizations, men were savages of a very
low type. They strove with their enemies and their
competitors ; they preyed upon things weaker or less
cunning than themselves ; they were born, multiplied
without stint, and died, for thousands of generations,
alongside the mammoth, the urus, the lion, and the
hysena, whose lives were spent in the same way ; and
they were no more to be praised or blamed, on moral
grounds, than their less erect and more hairy com
patriots. . . . Life was a continual free fight, and
beyond the limited and temporary relations of the
family, the Hobbesian war of each against all was the
normal state of existence. The human species, like
others, plashed and floundered amid the general
stream of evolution, keeping its head above water as
it best might, and thinking neither of whence nor
whither." 2

How then does Mr. Huxley act— for it is instructive
to follow out the consequences of an error — in the face
of this tremendous problem ? lie gives it up. There
is no solution. Nature is without excuse. After
framing an indictment against it in the severest lan
guage at his command, he turns his back upon Nature
— sub-human Nature, that is — and leaves teleology to
settle the score as best it can. " The history of civili
zation," he tells us, " is the record of the attempts of
the human race to escape from this position." But
whither does he betake himself? Is he not part of
Nature, and therefore a sharer in its guilt? By no

1 Evolution and Ethics, p. 6.

2 Nineteenth Century, Feb., 1888.

2'2 INTRODUCTION.

means. For by an astonishing tour deforce — the last,
as his former associates in the evolutionary ranks
have not failed to remind him, which might have been
expected of him — he ejects himself from the world-
order, and washes his hands of it in the name of Ethi
cal Man. After sharing the fortunes of Evolution all
his life, bearing its burdens and solving its doubts, he
abandons it without a pang, and sets up an imperium
in imperio, where, as a moral being, the " cosmic "
Struggle troubles him no more. " Cosmic Nature," he
says, in a parting shot at his former citadel, " is no
school of virtue, but the headquarters of the enemy of
ethical nature." l So far from the Ascent of Man run
ning along the ancient line, " Social progress means a
checking of the cosmic process at every step, and the
substitution for it of another, which may be called the
ethical process ; the end of which is not the survival
of those who may happen to be fittest, in respect of
the whole of the conditions which exist, but of those
who are ethically the best. 2 "

The expedient, to him, was a necessity. Viewing
Nature as Mr. Huxley viewed it there was no other
refuge. The " cosmic process " meant to him the
Struggle for Life, and to escape from the Struggle
for Life he was compelled to turn away from the
world-order, which had its being because of it. As it
happens, Mr. Huxley has hit upon the right solution,
only the method by which he reaches it is wholly
wrong. And the mischievous result of it is obvious
— it leaves all lower Nature in the lurch. With
a curious disregard of the principle of Continuity, to

1 Evolution and Ethics, p. 27. 2 Ibid,, p. 33.

THE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES. 23

which all his previous work had done such homage,
he splits up the world-order into two separate halves.
The earlier dominated by the "cosmic" principle—
the Struggle for Life; the other by the "ethical"
principle— virtually, the Struggle for the Life of
Others. The Struggle for Life is thus made to stop
at the "ethical" process; the Struggle for the Life
of Others to begin. Neither is justified by fact. The
Struggle for the Life of Others, as we have seen,
starts its upward course from the same protoplasm
as the Struggle for Life; and the Struggle for Life
runs on into the " ethical " sphere as much as the
Struggle for the Life of Others. One has only to see
where Mr. Huxley gets his "ethical" world to per
ceive the extent of the anomaly. For where does he
get it, and what manner of world is it ? " The history
of civilization details the steps by which men have
succeeded in building up an artificial world within the
cosmos." l An artificial world within the cosmos ?

This suggested breach between the earlier and the
later process, if indeed we are to take it seriously, is
scientifically indefensible, and the more unfortunate
since the same result, or a better, can be obtained
without it. The real breach is not between the
earlier and the later process, but between two rival,
or two co-operating processes, which have existed
from the first, which have worked together all along
the line, and which took on " ethical " characters at
the same moment in time. The Struggle for the Life
of Others is sunk as deep in the " cosmic process " as
the Struggle for Life; the Struggle for Life has a
share in the " ethical process " as much as the Strug-
1 Evolution and Ethics, p. 35.

24 INTRODUCTION.

gle for the Life of Others. Both are cosmic processes ;
both are ethical processes ; both are both cosmical
and ethical processes. Nothing but confusion can
arise from a cross-classification which does justice to
neither half of Nature.

The consternation caused by Mr. Huxley's change
of front, or supposed change of front, is matter of
recent history. Mr. Leslie Stephen and Mr. Herbert
Spencer hastened to protest; the older school of
moralists hailed it almost as a conversion. But the
one fact everywhere apparent throughout the dis
cussion is that neither side apprehended either the
ultimate nature or the true solution of the problem.
The seat of the disorder is the same in both attackers
and attacked — the one-sided view of Nature. Uni
versally Nature, as far as the plant, animal, and
savage levels, is taken to be synonymous with the
Struggle for Life. Darwinism held the monopoly of
that lower region, and Darwinism revenged itself in a
manner which has at least shown the inadequacy of
the most widely-accepted premise of recent science.

That Mr. Huxley has misgivings on the matter
himself is apparent from his Notes. " Of course,"
he remarks, in reference to the technical point,
"strictly speaking, social life and the ethical process
in virtue of which it advances towards perfection are
part and parcel of the general process of Evolution." 1
And he gets a momentary glimpse of the " ethical
process " in the cosmos, which, if he had followed it
out, must have modified his whole position. "Even
in these rudimentary forms of society, love and fear
come into play, and enforce a greater or less renun-
1 Evolution and Ethics, note 19.

THE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES. 25

elation of self-will. To this extent the general cosmic
process begins to be checked by a rudimentary ethical
process, which is, strictly speaking, part of the former,
just as the 'governor' in a steam-engine is part of
the mechanism of the engine." l

Here the whole position is virtually conceded ; and
only the pre-conceptions of Darwinism and the lack
of a complete investigation into the nature and extent
of the " rudimentary ethical process " can have pre
vailed in the face of such an admission. Follow out
the metaphor of the " governor," and, with one im
portant modification, the true situation almost stands
disclosed. For what appears to be the " governor " in
the rudimentary ethical process becomes the " steam-
engine " in the later process. The mere fact that it
exists in the "general cosmic process" alters the
quality of that process ; and the fact that, as we hope
to show, it becomes the prime mover in the later
process, entirely changes our subsequent conception of
it. The beginning of a process is to be read from the
end and not from the beginning. And if even a rudi
ment of a moral order be found in the beginnings of
this process it relates itself and that process to a final
end and a final unity.

Philosophy reads end into the earlier process by a
necessity of reason. But how much stronger its posi
tion if it could add to that a basis in the facts of
Nature? "I ask the evolutionist," pertinently in
quires Mr. Huxley's critic, who has no other basis
than the Struggle for existence how he accounts for
the intrusion of these moral ideas and standards
which presume to interfere with the cosmic process
Evolution and Ethics, note 19.

20 IN TR OD UCTIO AT.

and sit in judgment upon its results." l May we ask
the philosopher how he accounts for them ? As little
can he account for them as he who has " no other
basis than the Struggle for existence." Truly, the
writer continues, the question " cannot be answered so
long as we regard morality merely as an incidental re
sult, a by-product, as it were, of the cosmical system."
]>ut what if morality be the main product of the cos
mical system— of even the cosmical system ? What if
it can be shown that it is the essential and not the in
cidental result of it, and that so far from being a by
product, it is immorality that is the by-product ?

These interrogations may be too strongly put.
"Accompaniments" of the cosmical system might be
better than "products"; "revelations through that
process" may be nearer the truth than "results" of it.
But what is intended to sho\v is that the moral order
is a continuous line from the beginning, that it has
had throughout, so to speak, a basis in the cosmos,
that upon this, as a trellis-work, it has climbed up
wards to the top. The one — the trellis-work — is to be
conceived of as an incarnation ; the other — the mani
festation — as a revelation; the one is an Evolution
from below, the other an Involution from above.
Philosophy has long since assured us of the last, but
because it was never able to show us the completeness
of the first, science refused to believe it. The de
faulter nevertheless was not philosophy but science.
Its business was with the trellis- work. And it gave
us a broken trellis-work, a ladder with only one side,
and every step on the other side resting on air. When
science tried to climb the ladder it failed; the steps
1 Prof. Seth, Blackwood's Magazine, Dec., 1893.

THE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES. 27

refused to bear any weight. What did men of science
do? They condemned the ladder and, balancing
themselves on the side that was secure, proclaimed
their Agnosticism to philosophy. And what did phi
losophy do ? It stood on the other half of the ladder,
the half that was not there, and rated them. That the
other half was not there was of little moment. It
was in themselves. It ought to be there ; therefore
it must be there. And it is quite true ; it is there.
Philosophy, like Poetry, is prophetic : " The sense of
the whole," it says, "comes first." 1

But science could not accept the alternative. It
had looked, and it was not there; from its stand
point the only refuge was Agnosticism — there were no
facts. Till the facts arrived, therefore, philosophy
was powerless to relieve her ally. Science looked to
Nature to put in her own ends, and not to philosophy
to put them in for her. Philosophy might interpret
them after they were there, but it must have some
thing to start from ; and all that science had supplied
her with meantime was the fact of the Struggle for
Life. Working from the stand-point of the larger
Nature, Human Nature itself, philosophy could put in
other ends ; but there appeared no solid backing for
these in facts, and science refused to be satisfied.
The position was a fair one. The danger of phi
losophy putting in the ends is that she cannot con
vince every one that they are the right ones.

And what is the valid answer ? Of course, that

Nature has put in her own ends if we would take the

trouble to look for them. She does not require them

to be secretly manufactured upstairs and credited to

1 Prof. II. Jones, Browning, p. 28.

28 1NTK OD UVTIOX.

her account. By that process mistakes might arise
in the reckoning. The philosophers upstairs might
differ about the figures, or at least in equating them.
The philosopher requires fact, phenomenon, natural
law, at every turn to keep him right ; and without at
least some glimpse of these, he may travel far afield.
So long as Schopenhauer sees one thing in the course
of Nature and Rousseau another, it will always be
well to have Nature herself to act as referee. The
end as read in Nature and the end as re-read in, and
interpreted by, the higher Nature of Man may be very
different things ; but nothing can be done till the End-
in-the-phenomenon clears the way for the End-in-
itself — till science overtakes philosophy with facts.
When that is done, everything can be done. With
the finding of the other half of the ladder, even Ag
nosticism may retire. Science cannot permanently
pronounce itself " not knowing," till it has exhausted
the possibilities of knowing. And in this case the
Agnosticism is premature, for science has only to look
again, and it will discover that the missing facts are
there.

Seldom has there been an instance on so large a
scale of a biological error corrupting a whole philoso
phy. Bacon's aphorism was never more true :
" This I dare affirm in knowledge of Nature, that a
little natural philosophy, and the first entrance into
it, doth dispose the opinion to atheism, but on the
other side, much natural philosophy, and wading deep
into it, will bring about men's minds to religion." 1
Hitherto, the Evolutionist has had practically no other
basis than the Struggle for Life. Suppose even we
1 Meditationes Sacrce, X.

THE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES. 29

leave that untouched, the addition of an Other-
regarding basis makes an infinite difference. For
when it is then asked on which of them the process
turns, and the answer is given " On both," we perceive
that it is neither by the one alone, nor by the other
alone, that the process is to be interpreted, but i>y a
higher unity which resolves and embraces all. And
as both are equally necessary to this antinomy, even
that of the two which seems irreconcilable with
higher ends is seen to be necessary. Viewed aim-
pliciter, the Struggle for Life appears irreconcilable
with ethical ends, a prodigious anomaly in a moral
world ; but viewed in continuous reaction with the
Struggle for the Life of Others, it discloses itself as an
instrument of perfection the most subtle and far-
reaching that reason could devise.

The presence of the second factor, therefore, while
it leaves the first untouched, cannot leave its implica
tions untouched. It completely alters these implica
tions. It has never been denied that the Struggle for
Life is an efficient instrument of progress ; the sole
difficulty has always been to justify the nature of the
instrument. But if even it be shown that this is only
half the instrument, teleology gains something. If
the fuller view takes nothing away from the process of
Evolution, it imports something into it which changes
tlie whole aspect of the case. For even from the first
that factor is there. The Struggle for the Life of
Others, as we have seen, is no interpolation at the end
of the process, but radical, engrained in the world-
order as profoundly as the Struggle for Life. By
what right, then, has Nature been interpreted only by
the Struggle for Life? With far greater justice might

30 1NTE 01) UCTION.

science interpret it in the light of the Struggle for the
Life of Others. For, in the first place, unless there
had been this second factor, the world could not have
existed. Without the Struggle for the Life of Others,
obviously there would have been no Others. In the
second place, unless there had been a Struggle for the
Life of Others, the Struggle for Life could not have
been kept up. As will be shown later the Struggle
for Life almost wholly supports itself on the products
of the Struggle for the Life of Others. In the third
place, without the Struggle for the Life of Others, the
Struggle for Life as regards its energies would have
died down, and failed of its whole achievement. It is
the ceaseless pressure produced by the exuberant fer
tility of Reproduction that creates any valuable Strug
gle for Life at all. The moment " Others " multiply,
the individual struggle becomes keen up to the dis
ciplinary point. It was this, indeed— through the
reading of Malthus on Over-population — that sug
gested to Mr. Darwin the value of the Struggle for
Life. The law of Over-population from that time for
ward became the foundation-stone of his theory ; and
recent biological research has made the basis more
solid than ever. The Struggle for the Life of Others
on the plant and animal plane, in the mere work of
multiplying lives, is a final condition of progress.
Without competition there can be no fight, and with
out fight there can be no victory. In other words*
without the Struggle for the Life of Others there can
be no Struggle for Life, and therefore no Evolution.
Finally, and all the reasons already given are frivolous
beside it, had there been no Altruism— Altruism in
the definite sense of unselfishness, sympathy, and self-

THE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES. 31

sacrifice for Others, the whole higher world of life had
perished as soon as it was created. For hours, or
days, or weeks in the early infancy of all higher
animals, maternal care and sympathy are a condition
of existence. Altruism had to enter the world, and
any species which neglected it was extinguished in a
generation.

No doubt a case could be made out likewise for the
imperative value of the Struggle for Life. The posi
tion has just been granted. So far from disputing it,
we assume it to be equally essential to Nature and to
a judgment upon the process of Evolution. Bat what
is disputed is that the Struggle for Life is either the
key to Nature, or that it is more important in itself
than the Struggle for the Life of Others. It is pitiful
work pitting the right hand against the left, the heart
against the head ; but if it be insisted that there is
neither right hand nor heart, the proclamation is nec
essary not only that they exist, but that absolutely
they are as important and relatively to ethical Man
of infinitely greater moment than anything that
functions either in the animal or social organism.

But why, if all this be true of the Struggle for
the Life cf Others, has a claim so imperious not
been recognized by science ? That a phenomenon
of this distinction should have attracted so little
attention suggests a suspicion. Does it really exist ?
Ts the biological basis sound ? Have we not at least
exaggerated its significance ? The biologist will
judge. Though no doubt the function of Repro
duction is intimately connected in Physiology with
the function of Nutrition, the facts as stated here are
facts of Nature; and some glimpse of the influence of

32 INTRODUCTION.

this second factor will be given in the sequel from
which even the non-biological reader may draw his
own conclusions. Difficult as it seems to account for
the ignoring of an elemental fact in framing the
doctrine of Evolution, there are circumstances which
make the omission less unintelligible. Foremost, of
course, there stands the overpowering influence of
Mr. Darwin. In spite of the fact that he warned his
followers against it, this largely prejudged the issue.
Next is to be considered the narrowing, one had al
most said the blighting, effect of specialism. Neces
sary to the progress of science, the first era of a reign
of specialism is disastrous to philosophy. The men
who in field and laboratory are working out the facts,
do not speculate at all. Content with slowly building
up the sum of actual knowledge in some neglected and
restricted province, they are too absorbed to notice
even what the workers in the other provinces are
about. Thus it happens that while there are many
scientific men, there are few scientific thinkers. The
complaint is often made that science speculates too
much. It is quite the other way. One has only to
read the average book of science in almost any de
partment to wonder at the wealth of knowledge, the
brilliancy of observation, and the barrenness of idea.
On the other hand, though scientific experts will not
think themselves, there is always a multitude of on
lookers waiting to do it for them. Among these what
strikes one is the ignorance of fact and the audacity of
the idea. The moment any great half-truth in Nature
is unearthed, these unqualified practitioners leap to a
generalization ; and the observers meantime, on the
track of the other half, are too busy or too oblivious to

THE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES. 33

refute their heresies. Hence, long after its founda
tions are undermined, a brilliant generalization will
retain its hold upon the popular mind ; and before the
complementary, the qualifying, or the neutralizing
facts can be supplied, the mischief is done.

But while this is true of many who play with the
double-edged tools of science, it is not true of a third
class. When we turn to the pages of the few whose
science is adequate and whose sweep is over the whole
vast horizon, we find, as we should expect, some
recognition of the altruistic factor. Though Mr.
Herbert Spencer, to whom the appeal in this connec
tion is obvious, makes a different use of the fact, it
has not escaped him. Not only does the Other-re
garding function receive recognition, but he allots it
a high place in his system. Of its ethical bearings he
is equally clear. " What," he asks, " is the ethical as
pect of these altruistic principles ? In the first place,
animal life of all but the lowest kinds has been main
tained by virtue of them. Excluding the Protozoa,
among which their operation is scarcely discernible,
we see that without gratis benefits to offspring, and
earned benefits to adults, life could not have con
tinued. In the second place, by virtue of them life
has gradually evolved into higher forms. By care of
offspring which has become greater with advancing
organization, and by survival of the fittest in the com
petition among adults, which has become more habitual
with advancing organization, superiority has been
perpetually fostered and further advances caused." l
Fiske, Littre, Romanes, Le Conte, L. Biichner, Miss
Buckley, and Prince Kropotkin have expressed them-
1 Principles of Elides, Vol. n., p. 5,

34 INTRODUCTION.

selves partly in the same direction ; and Geddes and
Thomson, in so many words, recognize " the co-exist
ence of twin-streams of egoism and altruism, which
often merge for a space without losing their distinct
ness, and are traceable to a common origin in the
simplest forms of life." 1 The last- named — doubtless
because their studies have taken them both into the
fields of pure biology and of bionomics — more clearly
than any other modern writers, have grasped the
bearings of this theme in all directions, and they fear
lessly take their stand-point from the physiology of
protoplasm. Thus, " in the hunger and reproductive
attractions of the lowest organisms, the self-regarding
and other- regarding activities of the higher find their
starting-point. Though some vague consciousness is
perhaps co-existent with life itself, we can only speak
with confidence of psychical egoism and altruism
after a central nervous system has been definitely es
tablished. At the same time, the activities of even the
lowest organisms are often distinctly referable to
either category. . . . Hardly distinguishable at
the outset, the primitive hunger and love become the
starting-points of divergent lines of egoistic and altru
istic emotion and activity." 2

That at a much earlier stage than is usually sup
posed, Evolution visibly enters upon the "rudiment
ary ethical " plane, is certain, and we shall hope to
outline the proof. But even if the thesis fails, it re
mains to challenge the general view that the Struggle
for Life is everything, and the Struggle for the Life
of Others nothing. Seeing not only that the second is
the more important ; but also this far more significant

i The Evolution of Sex, p. 279. 2 Ibid., p. 279.

THE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES. fs5

fact — which has not yet been alluded to — that as
Evolution proveeas the one Struggle waxes, and the other
wanes, would it not be wiser to study the drama
nearer its denouement before deciding whether it was
a moral, a non-moral, or an immoral play ?

Lest the alleged waning of the Struggle for Life
convey a wrong impression, let it be added that of
course the word is to be taken qualitatively. The
Struggle in itself can never cease. What ceases is its
so-called anti-ethical character. For nothing is in
finer evidence as we rise in the scale of life than the
gradual tempering of the Struggle for Life. Its slow
amelioration is the work of ages, may be the work of
ages still, but its animal qualities in the social life of
Man are being surely left behind ; and though the
mark of the savage and the brute still mar its handi
work, these harsher qualities must pass away. In that
new social order which the gathering might of the
altruistic spirit is creating now around us, in that
reign of Love which must one day, if the course of
Evolution holds on its way, be realized, the baser
elements will find that solvent prepared for them from
the beginning in anticipation of a higher rule on earth.
Interpreting the course of Evolution scientifically,
whether from its starting-point in the first protoplasm,
or from the rallying-point of its two great forces in the
social organism of to-day, it becomes more and more
certain that only from the commingled achievement of
both can the nature of the process be truly judged.
Yet, as one sees the one sun set, and the other rise
with a splendor the more astonishing and bewildering
as the centuries roll on, it is impossible to withhold a
verdict as to which may be most reasonably looked

36 INTRODUCTION.

upon as the ultimate reality of the world. The path
of progress and the path of Altruism are one. Evolu
tion is nothing but the Involution of Love, the revela
tion of Infinite Spirit, the Eternal Life returning
to Itself. Even the great shadow of Egoism which
darkens the past is revealed as shadow only because
we are compelled to read it by the higher light which
has come. In the very act of judging it to be shadow,
we assume and vindicate the light. And in every
vision of the light, contrariwise, we resolve the
shadow, and perceive the end for which both light
and dark are given.

" I can believe, this dread machinery
Of sin and sorrow would confound me else.
Devised — all pain, at most expenditure
Of pain by Who devised pain — to evolve,
By new machinery in counterpart,
The moral qualities of Man — how else ? —
To make him love in turn, and be beloved,
Creative and self-sacrificing too,
And thus eventually Godlike." l

III.

WHY WAS EVOLUTION THE METHOD CHOSEN.

ONE seldom-raised yet not merely curious question
of Evolution is, why the process should be an evolu
tion at all? If Evolution, is simply a method of Crea
tion, why was this very extraordinary method chosen ?
Creation tout tfun coup might have produced the same
result; an instantaneous act or an age-long process
The Eincj and the Book— The Pope, 1375.

WHY WAS EVOLUTION THE METHOD CHOSEN. 37

would both have given us the world as it is ? The
answer of modern natural theology has been that the
evolutionary method is the infinitely nobler scheme.
A spectacular act, it is said, savors of the magician.
As a mere exhibition of power it appeals to the lower
nature ; but a process of growth suggests to the
reason the work of an intelligent Mind. No doubt
this intellectual gain is real. While a catastrophe
puts the universe to confusion at the start, a gradual
rise makes the beginning of Nature harmonious with
its end. How the surpassing grandeur of the new
conception has filled the imagination and kindled to
enthusiasm the soberest scientific minds, from Darwin
downwards, is known to every one. As the memo
rable words which close the Origin of Species recall :
" There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its sev
eral powers, having been originally breathed by the
Creator into a few forms or into one ; and that whilst
this planet has gone cycling on, according to the fixed
law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless
forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been,
and are being evolved." l

But can an intellectual answer satisfy us any more
than the mechanical answer which it replaced? As
there was clearly a moral purpose in the end to be
achieved by Evolution, should we not expect to find
some similar purpose in the means ? Can we perceive
no high design in selecting this particular design, no
worthy ethical result which should justify the concep
tion as well as the execution of Evolution ?

We go too far, perhaps, in expecting answers to
questions so transcendent. But one at least suggests
1 Origin of Species, p. 429.

38 INTRODUCTION.

itself, whose practical value is apology enough for
venturing to advance it. Whenever the scheme was
planned, it must have been foreseen that the time
would come when the directing of part of the course
of Evolution would pass into the hands of Man. A
spectator of the drama for ages, too ignorant to see
that it was a drama, and too impotent to do more than
play his little part, the discovery must sooner or later
break upon him that Nature meant him to become a
partner in her task, and share the responsibility of the
closing acts. It is not given to him as yet to bind the
sweet influences of Pleiades, or to unloose the bands of
Orion. In part only can he make the winds and waves
obey him, or control the falling rain. But in larger
part he holds the dominion of the world of lower life.
He exterminates what he pleases ; he creates and he
destroys ; he changes ; he evolves ; his selection re
places natural selection ; he replenishes the earth with
plants and animals according to his will. But in a far
grander sphere, and in an infinitely profounder sense,
has the sovereignty passed to him. For, by the same
decree, he finds himself the guardian and the arbiter
of his personal destiny, and that of his fellow-men.
The moulding of his life and of his children's children
in measure lie with him. Through institutions of his
creation, through Parliaments, Churches, Societies,
Schools, he shapes the path of progress for his country
and his time. The evils of the world are combated by
his remedies ; its passions are stayed, its wrongs re
dressed, its energies for good or evil directed by his
hand. For unnumbered millions he opens or shuts the
gates of happiness, and paves the way for misery or
social health. Never before was it known and felt

WHY WAS EVOLUTION THE METHOD CHOSEN. 39

with the same solemn certainty that Man, within
bounds which none can pass, must be his own maker
and the maker of the world. For the first time in
history not individuals only but multitudes of the
wisest and the noblest in every land take home to
themselves, and unceasingly concern themselves with
the problem of the Evolution of Mankind. Multitudes
more, philanthropists, statesmen, missionaries, humble
men and patient women, devote themselves daily to
its practical solution, and everywhere some, in a God-
- like culmination of Altruism, give their very lives for
their fellow-men. Who is to help these Practical Evo
lutionists—for those who read the book of Nature can
call them by no other name, and those who know its
spirit can call them by no higher— who is to help them
in their tremendous task? There is the will— where
is the wisdom ?

Where but in Nature herself. Nature may have
entrusted the further building to Mankind, but the
plan has never left her hands. The lines of the future
are to be learned from her past, and her fellow-helpers
can most easily, most loyally, and most perfectly do
their part by studying closely the architecture of
the earlier world, and continuing the half-finished
structure symmetrically to the top. The information
necessary to complete the work with architectural
consistency lies in Nature. We might expect that it
should be there. When a business is transferred, or a
partner assumed, the books are shown, the methods of
the business explained, its future developments pointed
out. All this is now done for the Evolution of Man
kind. In Evolution Creation has shown her hand.
To have kept the secret from Man would have im-

40 INTRODUCTION.

perilled the further evolution. To have revealed it
sooner had been premature. Love must come before
knowledge, for knowledge is the instrument of Love,
and useless till it arrives. But now that there is
Altruism enough in the world to begin the new era,
there must be wisdom enough to direct it. To make
Nature spell out her own career, to embody the key to
the development in the very development itself, so that
the key might be handed over along with the work,
was to make the transference of responsibility possible
and rational. In the seventeenth century, Descartes,
who with Leibnitz already foresaw the adumbration of
the evolutionary process, almost pointed this 'out ;
for speaking, in another connection, of the intellectual
value of a slow development of things he observes,
" their nature is much more easy to conceive when
they are seen originating by degrees in this way, than
when they are considered as entirely made." l

The past of Nature is a working-model of how
worlds can be made. The probabilities are there is no
better way of making them. If Man does as well it
will be enough. In any case he can only begin where
Nature left off, and work with such tools as are put
into his hands. If the new partner had been intended
merely to experiment with world-making, no such
legacy of useful law had been ever given him. And if
he had been meant to begin de novo on a totally different
plan, it is unlikely either that that should not have
been hinted at, or that in his touching and beautiful
endeavor he should be embarrassed and thrown off
the track by the old plan. As a child set to complete
some fine embroidery is shown the stitches, the
1 Discourse on Method.

EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY. 41

colors, and the outline traced upon the canvas, so
the great Mother in setting their difficult task to her
later children provides them with one superb part
finished to show the pattern.

IV.

EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY.

THE moment it is grasped that we may have in
Nature a key to the future progress of Mankind,
the study of Evolution rises to an imposing rank in
human interest. There lies the programme of the
world from the first of time, the instrument, the char
ter, and still more the prophecy of progress. Evolu
tion is the natural directory of the sociologist, the
guide through that which has worked in the past to
what — subject to modifying influences which Nature
can always be trusted to give full notice of — may be
expected to work in the future. Here, for the indi
vidual, is a new and impressive summons to public
action, a vocation chosen of Nature which it will
profit him to consider, for thereby he may not only
save the whole world, but find his own soul. "The
study of the historical development of man," says
Prof. Edward Caird, "especially in respect of his
higher life, is not only a matter of external or merely
speculative curiosity ; it is closely connected with the
development of that life in ourselves. For we learn
to know ourselves, first of all, in the mirror of the
world : or, in other words, our knowledge of our own
nature and of its possibilities grows and deepens with

42 INTRODUCTION.

our understanding of what is without us, and most of
all with our understanding of the general history of
man. It has often been noticed that there is a certain
analogy between the life of the individual and that of
the race, and even that the life of the individual is a
sort of epitome of the history of humanity. But, as
Plato already discovered, it is by reading the large
letters that we learn to interpret the small. . . .
It is only through a deepened consciousness of the
world that the human spirit can solve its own prob
lem. Especially is this true in the region of anthro
pology. For the inner life of the individual is deep
and full just in proportion to the width of his relations
to other men and things ; and his consciousness of
what he is in himself as a spiritual being ic dependent
on a comprehension of the position of his individual
life in the great secular process by which the intel
lectual and moral life of humanity has grown and is
growing. Hence the highest practical, as well as spec
ulative, interests of men are connected with the new
extension of science which has given fresh interest and
meaning to the whole history of the race." l If, as
Herbert Spencer reminds us, " it is one of those open
secrets which seem the more secret because they are
so open, that all phenomena displayed by a nation are
phenomena of Life, and are dependent on the laws of
Life," we cannot devote ourselves to study those laws
too earnestly or too soon. From the failure to get at
the heart of the first principles of Evolution the old
call to " follow Nature " has all but become a heresy.
Nature, as a moral teacher, thanks to the Darwinian
interpretation, was never more discredited than at
1 The Evolution of Religion, Vol. i., pp. 25, 29.

EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY. 43

this hour ; and friend and foe alike agree in warning
us against her. But a further reading of Nature may
decide not that we must discharge the teacher but beg
her mutinous pupils to try another term at school.
With Nature studied in the light of a true biology, or
even in the sense in which the Stoics themselves em
ployed their favorite phrase, it must become once
more the watchword of personal and social progress.
With Mr. Huxley's definition of what the Stoics
meant by Nature as " that which holds up the ideal of
the supreme good and demands absolute submission of
the will to its behests. . . which commands all men
to love one another, to return good for evil, to regard
one another as citizens of one great state," 1 the
phrase, " Live according to Nature," so far from hav
ing no application to the modern world or no sanc
tion in modern thought, is the first commandment of
Natural Religion.

The sociologist has grievously complained of late
that he could get but little help from science. The
suggestions of Bagehot, the Synthetic Philosophy of
Herbert Spencer, the proposals of multitudes of the
followers of the last who announced the redemption
of the world the moment they discovered the " Social
Organisms," raised great expectations. But somehow
they were not fulfilled. Mr. Spencer's work has been
mainly to give this century, and in part all time, its
first great map of the field. He has brought all the
pieces on the board, described them one by one, de
fined and explained the game. But what he has
failed to do with sufficient precision, is to pick out the
King and Queen. And because he has not done so,
1 Evolution and Ethics, p. 27.

44 IN TROD UCTION.

some men have mistaken his pawns for kings ; others
have mistaken the real kings for pawns ; every ism
has found endorsement in his pages, and men have
gathered courage for projects as hostile to his whole
philosophy as to social order. Theories of progress
have arisen without any knowledge of its laws, and
the ordered course of things has been done violence to
by experiments which, unless the infinite conserva
tism of Nature had neutralized their evils, had been
a worse disaster than they are. This inadequacy, in
deed, of modern sociology to meet the practical prob
lems of our time, has become a by-word. Mr. Leslie
Stephen pronounces the existing science " a heap of
vague empirical observation, too flimsy to be useful " ;
and Mr. Huxley, exasperated with the condition in
which it leaves the human family, prays that if
" there is no hope of a large improvement " he should
"hail the advent of some kindly comet which would
sweep the whole affair away."

The first step in the reconstruction of Sociology will
be to escape from the shadow of Darwinism — or rather
to complement the Darwinian formula of the Struggle
for Life by a second factor which will turn its dark
ness into light. A new morphology can only come
from a new physiology, and vice versa; and for both
we must return to Nature. The one-sided induction
has led Sociology into a wilderness of empiricism, and
only a complete induction can reinstate it among the
sciences. The vacant place is there awaiting it ; and
every earnest mind is prepared to welcome it, not only
as the coming science, but as the crowning Science of
all the sciences, the Science, indeed, for which it will
one day be seen every other science exists. What it

EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY. 45

waits for meantime is what every science has had to
wait for, exhaustive observation of the facts and ways
of Nature. Geology stood still for centuries waiting
for those who would simply look at the facts. Men
speculated in fantastic ways as to how the world
could have been made, and the last thing that oc
curred to them was to go and see it making. Then
came the observers, men who, waiving all theories of
the process, addressed themselves to the natural
world direct, and in watching its daily programme of
falling rain and running stream laid bare the secret
for all time. Sociology has had its Werners ; it awaits
its Huttons. The method of Sociology must be the
method of all the natural sciences. It also must go
and see the world making, not where the conditions are
already abnormal beyond recall, or where Man, by
irregular action, has already obscured everything but
the conditions of failure ; but in lower Nature which
makes no mistakes, and in those fairer reaches of a
higher world where the quality and the stability of
the progress are guarantees that the eternal order of
Nature has had her uncorrupted way.

It cannot be that the full programme for the perfect
world lies in the imperfect part. Nor can it ever be
that science can find the end in the beginning, get
moral out of non-moral states, evolve human societies
from ant-heaps, or philanthropies from protoplasm.
But in every beginning we get a beginning of an end ;
in every process a key to the single step to be taken
next. The full corn is not in the ear, but the first cell
of it is, and though " it doth not yet appear " what
the million-celled ear shall be, there is rational ground
for judging what the second cell shall be. The next

46 INTRODUCTION.

few cells of the Social Organism are all that are given
to Sociology to affect. And, in dealing with them, its
business is with the forces; the phenomena will
take care of themselves. Neither the great forces
of Nature, nor the great lines of Nature, change in a
day, and however apparently unrelated seem the phe
nomena as we ascend — here animal, there human ; at
one time non-moral, at another moral — the lines of
progress are the same. Nature, in horizontal section,
is broken up into strata which present to the eye of
ethical Man the profoundest distinctions in the uni
verse ; but Nature in the vertical section offers no
break, or pause, or flaw. To study the first is to study
a hundred unrelated sciences, sciences of atoms, sci
ences of cells, sciences of Souls, sciences of Societies ;
to study the second is to deal with one science — Evo
lution. Here, on the horizontal section, may be what
Geology calls an unconformability ; there is overlap ;
changes of climate may be registered from time to
time each with its appropriate re-action on the things
contained ; upheavals, depressions, denudations, glacia-
tions, faults, vary the scene ; higher forms of fossils
appear as we ascend ; but the laws of life are con
tinuous throughout, the eternal elements in an ever
temporal world. The Struggle for Life, and the
Struggle for the Life of Others, in essential nature
have never changed. They find new expression in
each further sphere, become colored to our eye with
different hues, are there the rivalries or the affections
of the brute, and here the industrial or the moral
conflicts of the race ; but the factors themselves re
main the same, and all life moves in widening spirals
round them. Fix in the mind this distinction between

EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY. 47

the horizontal and the vertical view of Nature, be
tween the phenomena and the law, between all the
sciences that ever were and the one science which
resolves them all, and the confusions and contra
dictions of Evolution are reconciled. The man who
deals with Nature statically, who catalogues the
phenomena of life and mind, puts on each its museum
label, and arranges them in their separate cases, may
well defy you to co- relate such diverse wholes. To
him Evolution is alike impossible and unthinkable.
But these items that he labels are not wholes. And
the world he dissects is not a museum, but a living,
moving and ascending thing. The sociologist's bus
iness is with the vertical section, and he who has to
do with this living, moving, and ascending thing
must treat it from the dynamic point of view.

The significant thing for him is the study of Evolu
tion on its working side. And he will find that nearly
all the phenomena of social and national life are
phenomena of these two principles — the Struggle for
Life, and the Struggle for the Life of Others. Hence
he must betake himself in earnest to see what these
mean in Nature, what gathers round them as they
ascend, how each acts separately, how they work
together, and whither they seem to lead. More than
ever the method of Sociology must be biological.
More urgently than ever "the time has come for a
better understanding and for a more radical method ;
for the social sciences to strengthen themselves by
sending their roots deep into the soil underneath from
which they spring, and for the biologist to advance
over the frontier and carry the methods of his science
boldly into human society, where he has but to deal

48 INTRODUCTION.

with the phenomena of life, where he encounters life
at last under its highest and most complex aspect." *

Would that the brilliant writer whose words these
are, and whose striking work appears while these
sheets are almost in the press, had " sent his roots
deep enough into biological soil " to discover the true
foundation for that future Science of Society which he
sees to be so imperative. No modern thinker has seen
the problem so clearly as Mr. Kidd, but his solution,
profoundly true in itself, is vitiated in the eyes of
science and philosophy by a basis wholly unsound.
With an emphasis which Darwin himself has not ex
celled, he proclaims the enduring value of the Struggle
for Life. He sees its immense significance even in the
highest ranges of the social sphere. There it stands
with its imperious call to individual assertion, inciting
to a rivalry which Nature herself has justified, and
encouraging every man by the highest sanctions
ceaselessly to seek his own. But he sees nothing else
in Nature ; and he encounters therefore the difficulty
inevitable from this stand-point. For to obey this voice
means ruin to Society, wrong and anarchy against the
higher Man. He listens for another voice ; but there
is no response. As a social being he cannot, in spite of
Nature, act on his first initiative. He must subordi
nate himself to the larger interest, present and future,
of those around him. But why, he asks, must he, since
Nature says "Mind thyself ?" Till Nature adds the
further precept, "Look not every man on his own
things, but also on the things of Others," there is no
rational sanction for morality. And he finds no such

1 Benjamin Kidd, Social Evolution, p. 28.

EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY. 49

precept. There is none in Nature. There is none in
Reason. Nature can only point him to a strenuous
rivalry as the one condition of continued progress ;
Reason can only endorse the verdict. Hence he breaks
at once with reason and with Nature, and seeks an
" ultra-rational sanction " for the future course of
social progress.

Here, in his own words, is the situation. "The
teaching of reason to the individual must always be
that the present time and his own interests therein
are all-important to him. That the forces which are
working out our development are primarily concerned
not with those interests of the individual, but with
those widely different interests of a social organism
subject to quite other conditions and possessed of an
indefinitely longer life. . . . The central fact with
which we are confronted in our progressive societies
is, therefore, that the interests of the social organism
and those of the individuals comprising it at any time
are actually antagonistic; they can never be recon
ciled; they are inherently and essentially irreconcil
able." l Observe the extraordinary dilemma. Reason
not only has no help for the further progress of
Society, but Society can only go on upon a principle
which is an affront to it. As Man can only attain his
highest development in Society, his individual in
terests must more and more subordinate themselves
to the welfare of a wider whole. " How is the posses
sion of reason ever to be rendered compatible with the
will to submit the conditions of existence so onerous,
requiring the effective and continual subordination of
the individual's welfare to the progress of a develop-

1 Op. ftt., 1), 7?..

50 IN TR OD UCTION.

ment in which he can have no personal interest what
ever ? " l

Mr. Kidd's answer is the bold one that it is not com
patible. There is no rational sanction whatever for
progress. Progress, in fact, can only go on by enlist
ing Man's reason against itself. "All those systems
of moral philosophy, which have sought to find in the
nature of things a rational sanction for human conduct
in society, must sweep round and round in futile
circles. They attempt an inherently impossible task.
The first great social lesson of those evolutionary doc
trines which have transformed the science of the nine
teenth century is, that there cannot be such a sanc
tion.2 . . . The extraordinary character of the
problem presented by human society begins thus
slowly to come into view. We find man making con
tinual progress upwards, progress which it is almost
beyond the power of the imagination to grasp. From
being a competitor of the brutes he has reached a
point of development at which he cannot himself set
any limits to the possibilities of further progress, and
at which he is evidently marching onwards to a high
destiny. He has made this advance under the stern
est conditions, involving rivalry and competition for
all, and the failure and suffering of great numbers.
His reason has been, and necessarily continues to be, a
leading factor in this development ; yet, granting, as
we apparently must grant, the possibility of the re
versal of the conditions from which his progress
results, those conditions have not any sanction from
his reason. They have had no such sanction at any
stage of his history, and they continue to be as much
1 Op. cit., p. 04. * Of. cit., p. 79.

EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY. 51

without such sanction in the highest civilization of the
present day as at any past period." :

These conclusions will not have been quoted in vain
if they show the impossible positions to which a
writer, whose contribution oth'i'wise is of profound
and permanent value, is committed by a false reading
of Nature. Is it conceivable, a priori, that the human
reason should be put to confusion by a breach of the
Law of Continuity at the very point where its sus
tained action is of vital moment? The whole com
plaint, which runs like a dirge through every chapter
of this book, is founded on a misapprehension of the
fundamental laws which govern the processes of
Evolution. The factors of Darwin and Weismanii
are assumed to contain an ultimate interpretation of
the course of things. For all time the conditions of
existence are taken as established by these authorities.
With the Struggle for Life in sole possession of the
field no one, therefore, we are warned, need ever
repeat the gratuitous experiment of the past, of
Socrates, Plato, Kant, Hegel, Cornte, and Herbert
Spencer, to find a sanction for morality in Nature.
I " All methods and systems alike, which have endeav
ored to find in the nature of things any universal
rational sanction for individual conduct in a progress
ive society, must be ultimately fruitless. They are
all alike inherently unscientific in that they attempt
to do what the fundamental conditions of existence
render impossible." And Mr. Kidd puts a climax on
his devotion to the doctrine of his masters by mourn
ing over " the incalculable loss to English Science
and English Philosophy " because Herbert Spencer's
1 Op. ell., pp. 77-78.

52 INTRODUCTION.

work " was practically complete before his intellect
had any opportunity of realizing the full transform
ing effect in the higher regions of thought, and, more
particularly, in the department of sociology, of that
development of biological science which began with
Darwin, which is still in full progress, and to which
Professor Weismann has recently made the most
notable contributions." l Whether Mr. Spencer's
ignorance or his science has been at the bottom of
the escape, it is at least a lucky one. For if Mr.
Kidd had realized "the full transforming effect"
of the following paragraph, much of his book could
not have been written. " The most general conclusion
is that in order of obligation, the preservation of the
species takes precedence of the preservation of the
individual. It is true that the species has no existence
save as an aggregate of individuals; and it is true that,
therefore, the welfare of the species is an end to be
subserved only as subserving the welfare of individ
uals. But since disappearance of the species, imply
ing absolute disappearance of all individuals, involves
absolute failure in achieving the end, whereas disap
pearance of individuals though carried to a great
extent, may leave outstanding such numbers as can,
by continuance of the species, make subsequent fulfil
ment of the end possible ; the preservation of the
individual must, in a variable degree according to
circumstances, be subordinated to the preservation of
the species, where the two conflict." 2

What Mr. Kidd has succeeded, and splendidly
succeeded, in doing is to show that Nature as inter
preted in terms of the Struggle for -Life contains no
1 Op. fit., p. 80 2 Principles of Ethics, Vol. u., p. 6.

EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY. 53

sanction either for morality or for social progress.
But instead of giving up Nature and Reason at this
point, he should have given up Darwin. The Struggle
for Life is not " the supreme fact up to which biology
has slowly advanced." It is the fact to which Darwin
advanced; but if biology had been thoroughly con
sulted it could not have given so maimed an account
or* itself. With the final conclusion reached by Mr.
Kidd we have no quarrel. Eliminate the errors due
to an unrevised acceptance of Mr. Darwin's interpret
ation of Nature, and his work remains the most
important contribution to Social Evolution which the
last decade has seen. But what startles us is his
method. To put the future of Social Science on an
ultra-rational basis is practically to give it up. Un
less thinking men have some sense of the consistency
of a method they cannot work with it, and if there is
no guarantee of the stability of the results it would
not be worth while.

But all that Mr. Kidd desires is really to be found
in Nature. There is no single element even of his
highest sanction which is not provided for in a
thorough-going doctrine of Evolution — a doctrine,
that is, which includes all the facts and all the factors,
and especially which takes into account that evolution
of Environment which goes on pari passu with the
evolution of the organism and where the highest sanc
tions ultimately he. With an Environment which
widens and enriches until it includes— or consciously
includes, for it has never been absent — the Divine ;
and with Man so evolving as to become more and
more conscious that that Divine is there, and above
all that it is in himself, all the materials and all the

54 INTRODUCTION.

sanctions for a moral progress are forever secure.
None of the sanctions of religion are withdrawn by
adding to them the sanctions of Nature. Even those
sanctions which are supposed to lie over and above
Nature may be none the less rational sanctions.
Though a positive religion, in the Comtian sense, is
no religion, a religion that is not in some degree posi
tive is an impossibility. And although religion must
always rest upon faith, there is a reason for faith, and
a reason not only in Reason, but in Nature herself.
When Evolution comes to be worked out along its
great natural lines, it may be found to provide for all
that religion assumes, all that philosophy requires,
and all that science proves.

Theological minds, with premature approval, have
hailed Mr. Kidd's solution as a vindication of their
supreme position. Practically, as a vindication of the
dynamic power of the religious factor in the Evolution
of Mankind, nothing could be more convincing. But
as an apologetic, it only accentuates a weakness which
scientific theology never felt more keenly than at the
present hour. This weakness can never be removed
by an appeal to the ultra-rational. Does Mr. Kidd
not perceive that any one possessed of reason enough
to encounter his dilemma, either in the sphere of
thought or of conduct, will also have reason enough
to reject any "ultra-rational" solution? This di
lemma is not one which would occur to more than one
in a thousand ; it has tasked all Mr. Kidd's powers to
convince his reader that it exists ; but if exceptional
intellect is required to see it, surely exceptional in
tellect must perceive that this is not the way out of it.
One cannot, in fact, think oneself out of a difficulty of

EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY. 55

this kind ; it can only be lived out. And that precisely
is what Nature is making all of us, in greater or less
degree, do, and every day making us do more. By
the time, indeed, that the world as a whole is suffi
ciently educated to see the problem, it will already
have been solved. There is little comfort, then, for
apologetics in this direction. Only by bringing theol
ogy into harmony with Nature and into line with the
rest of our knowledge can the noble interests given it
to conserve retain their vitality in a scientific age.
The first essential of a working religion is that it shall
be congruous with Man ; the second that it shall be
congruous with Nature. Whatever its sanctions, its
forces must not be abnormal, but reinforcements and
higher potentialities of those forces which, from eter
nity, have shaped the progress of the world. No
other dynamic can enter into the working schemes of
those who seek to guide the destinies of nations or
carry on the Evolution of Society on scientific princi
ples! A divorce here would be the catastrophe of
reason, and the end of faith. We believe with Mr.
Kidd that " the process of social development which
has been taking place, and which is still in progress,
in our Western civilization, is not the product of the
intellect, but the motive force behind it has had its
seat and origin in the fund of altruistic feeling with
which our civilization has become equipped." But we
shall endeavor to show that this fund of altruistic
feeling has been slowly funded in the race by Nature,
or through Nature, and as the direct and inevitable
result of that Struggle for the Life of Others, which
has been from all time a condition of existence.
What religion has done to build up this fund,

56 INTRODUCTION.

it may not be within the scope of this introduc
tory volume to inquire; it has done so much that
students of religion may almost be pardoned the over
sight of the stupendous natural basis which made it
possible. But nothing is gained by protesting that
"this altruistic development, and the deepening and
softening of character which has accompanied it, are
the direct and peculiar product of the religious
system." For nothing can ever be gained by setting
one half of Nature against the other, or the rational
against the ultra-rational. To affirm that Altruism is
a peculiar product of religion is to excommunicate
Nature from the moral order, and religion from the
rational order. If science is to begin to recognize
religion, religion must at least end by recognizing
science. And so far from religion sacrificing vital
distinctions by allying itself with Nature, so far from
impoverishing its immortal quality by accepting some
contribution from the lower sphere, it thereby extends
itself over the whole rich field, and claims all — matter,
life, mind, space, time — for itself. The present danger
is not in applying Evolution as a method, but only in
not carrying it far enough. No man, no man of sci
ence even, observing the simple facts, can ever rob
religion of its due. Religion has done more for the
development of Altruism in a few centuries than all
the millenniums of geological time. But we dare not
rob Nature of its due. We dare not say that Nature
played the prodigal for ages, and reformed at the
eleventh hour. If Nature is the Garment of God, it is
woven without seam throughout ; if a revelation of
God, it is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever; if
the expression of His Will, there is in it no variable-

.EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY. 57

ness nor shadow of turning. Those who see great
gulfs fixed— and we have all begun by seeing them—
end by seeing them filled up. Were these gulfs es
sential to any theory of the universe or of Man, even
the establishment of the unity of Nature were a dear
price to pay for obliterating them. But the apparent
loss is only gain, and the seeming gain were infinite
loss. For to break up Nature is to break up Reason,
and with it God and Mali.

CHAPTER I.

THE ASCENT OF THE BODY.

THE earliest home of Primitive Man was a cave in
the rocks — the simplest and most unevolved form of
human habitation. One day, perhaps driven by the
want within his hunting-grounds of the natural cave,
he made himself a hut — an artificial cave. This sim
ple dwelling-place was a one-roomed hut or tent of
skin and boughs, and so completely does it satisfy
the rude man's needs that down to the present hour
no ordinary savage improves upon the idea. But as
the hut surrounds itself with other huts and grows
into a village, a new departure must take place. The
village must have its chief, and the chief, in virtue of
his larger life, requires a more spacious home. Each
village, therefore, adds to its one-roomed hut, a hut
with two rooms. From the two-roomed hut we pass,
among certain tribes, to three- and four-roomed huts,
and finally to the many-chambered lodge of the Head-
Chief or King.

This passage from the simple cave to the many-
chambered lodge is an Evolution, and a similar devel
opment may be traced in the domestic architecture of
all civilized societies. The laborer's cottage of mod-

59

00 THE ASCENT OF THE BODY.

ern England and the shieling of the Highland crofter
are the survivals of the one-roomed hut of Primitive
Man, scarcely changed in any essential with the lapse
of years. In the squire's mansion also, and the noble
man's castle, we have the representatives, but now in
an immensely developed form, of the many-roomed
home of the chief. The steps by which the cottage
became the castle are the same as those by which the
cave in the rocks became the lodge of the chief.
Both processes wear the hall -mark of all true devel
opment — they arise in response to growing necessi
ties, and they are carried out by the most simple and
natural steps.

In this evolution of a human habitation we have an
almost perfect type of the evolution of that more
august habitation, the complex tenement of clay in
which Man's mysterious being has its home. The
Body of Man is a structure of a million, or a million
million cells. And the history of the unborn babe is,
in the first instance, a history of additions, of room
being added to room, of organ to organ, of faculty to
faculty. The general process, also, by which this
takes place is almost as clear to modern science as in
the case of material buildings. A special class of ob
servers has carefully watched these secret and amaz
ing metamorphoses, and so wonderful has been their
success with mind and microscope that they can al
most claim to have seen Man's Body made. The Sci
ence of Embryology undertakes to trace the develop
ment of Man from a stage in which he lived in a one-
roomed house — a physiological cell. Whatever the
multitude of rooms, the millions and millions of cells,
in which to-day each adult carries on the varied work

THE ASCENT OF THE BODY. 61

of life, it is certain that when he first began to be he
was the simple tenant of a single cell. Observe, it is
not some animal-ancestor or some human progenitor
of Man that lived in this single cell— that may or may
not have been— but the individual Man, the present
occupant himself. We are dealing now not with phy-
logeny— the history of the race— but with ontogeny—
the problem of Man's Ascent from his own earlier self.
And the point at the moment is not that the race as
cends ; it is that each individual man has once, in his
own life-time, occupied a single cell, and starting from
that humble cradle, has passed through stage after
stage of differentiation, increase, and development,
until the myriad-roomed adult-form was attained.
Whence that first cradle came is at present no matter.
Whether its remote progenitor rocked among the
waves of primeval seas or swung from the boughs of
forests long since metamorphosed into coal does not
affect the question of the individual ascent of Man.
The answers to these questions are hypotheses. The
fact that now arrests our wonder is that when the ear
liest trace of an infant's organization meets the eye
of science it is nothing but a one-celled animal. And
so closely does its development from that distant
point follow the lines of the evolution just described
in the case of the primitive savage hut, that we have
but to make a few changes in phraseology to make the
one process describe the other. Instead of rooms and
chambers we shall now read cells and tissues ; instead
of the builder's device of adding room to room, we
shall use the physiologist's term segmentation; the
employments carried on in the various rooms will be
come the functions discharged by the organs of the

62 THE ASCENT OF THE BODY.

human frame, and line for line the history of the evo«
lution will be found to be the same.

The embryo of the future man begins life, like the
primitive savage, in a one-roomed hut, a single simple
cell. This cell is round and almost microscopic in
size. When fully formed it measures only one-tenth
of a line in diameter, and with the naked eye can be
barely discerned as a very fine point. An outer cover
ing, transparent as glass, surrounds this little sphere,
and in the interior, embedded in protoplasm, lies a
bright globular spot. In form, in size, in composition
there is no apparent difference between this human
cell and that of any other mammal. The dog, the ele
phant, the lion, the ape, and a thousand others begin
their widely different lives in a house the same as
Man's. At an earlier stage indeed, before it has taken
on its pellucid covering, this cell has affinities still
more astonishing. For at that remoter period the ear
lier forms of all living things, both plant and animal,
are one. It is one of the most astounding facts of
modern science that the first embryonic abodes of
moss and fern and pine, of shark and crab and coral
polyp, of lizard, leopard, monkey, and Man are so
exactly similar that the highest powers of mind and
microscope fail to trace the smallest distinction be
tween them.

But let us watch the development of this one-celled
human embryo. Increase of rooms in architecture can
be effected in either of two ways — by building entirely
new rooms, or by partitioning old ones. Both of these
methods are employed in Xature. The first, gemma
tion, or budding, is common among the lower forms of
life. The second, differentiation by partition, or seg*

THE ASCENT OF THE BODY. 63

mentation, is the approved method among higher
animals, and is that adopted in the case of Man. It
proceeds, after the fertilized ovum has completed the
complex preliminaries of karyokinesis, by the division
of the interior-contents into two equal parts, so that
the original cell is now occupied by two nucleated cells
with the old cell-wall surrounding them outside. The
two-roomed house is, in the next development, and by
a similar process of segmentation, developed into a
structure of four rooms, and this into one of eight, and
so on.1 In a short time the number of chambers is so

1 When the multicellular globe, made up of countless offshoots
or divisions of the original pair, has reached a certain size, its
centre becomes filled with a tiny lakelet of watery fluid. This
fluid gradually increases in quantity and, pushing the cells out
ward, packs them into a single layer, circumscribing it on every
side as with an elastic wall. At one part a dimple soon appears,
which slowly deepens, until a complete hollow is formed. So far
does this invagination of the sphere go on that the cells at the
bottom of the hollow touch those at the opposite side. The ovum
has now become an open bag or cup, such as one might make by
doubling in an india-rubber ball, and thus is formed the gastrula
of biology. The evolutional interest of this process lies in the
fact that probably all animals above the Protozoa pass through
this gastrula stage. That some of the lower Metazoa, indeed,
never develop much beyond it, a glance at the structure of the
humbler Coelenterates will show— the simplest of all illustra
tions of the fact that embryonic forms of higher animals are often
permanently represented by the adult forms of lower. The chief
thing however to mark here is the doubling-in of the ovum to
gain a double instead of a single wall of cells. For these two
different layers, the ectoderm and the endoderm, or the animal
layer and the vegetal layer, play a unique part in the after-
history. All the organs of movement and sensation spring from
the one, all the organs of nutrition and reproduction develop from
the other.

64 THE ASCENT OF THE BODY.

great that count is lost, and the activity becomes so
vigorous in every direction that one ceases to notice
individual cells at all. The tenement in fact consists
now of innumerable groups of cells congregated to
gether, suites of apartments as it were, which have
quickly arranged themselves in symmetrical, definite,
and withal different forms. Were these forms not
different as well as definite we should hardly call it an
evolution, nor should we characterize the resulting
aggregation as a higher organism. A hundred cot
tages placed in a row would never form a castle.
What makes the castle superior to the hundred cot
tages is not the number of its rooms, for they are pos
sibly fewer ; nor their difference in shape, for that is
immaterial. It lies in the number and nature and
variety of useful purposes to which the rooms are put,
the perfection with which each is adapted to its end,
and the harmonious co-operation among them with
reference to some common work. This also is the dis
tinction between a higher animal and a humble organ
ism such as the centipede or the worm. These
creatures are a monotony of similar rings, like a string
of beads. Each bead is the counterpart of the other ;
and with such an organization any high or varied life
becomes an impossibility. The fact that any growing
embryo is passing through a real development is de
cided by the new complexity of structure, by the more
perfect division of labor, and of better kinds of labor,
and by the increase in range and efficiency of the cor
related functions discharged by the whole. In the
development of the human embryo the differentiating
and integrating forces are steadily acting and co-oper
ating from the first, so that the result is not a mere

THE ASCENT OF THE BODY. G5

aggregation of similar cells, but an organism with
different parts and many varied functions. When all
is complete we find that one suite of cells has been
especially set apart to provide the commissariat,
others have devoted themselves exclusively to assimi
lation. The ventilation of trie house — respiration-
has been attended to by others, and a central force-
pump has been set up, and pipes and ducts for many
purposes installed throughout the system. Telegraph
wires have next been stretched in every direction to
keep up connection between the endless parts ; and
other cells developed into bony pillars for support.
Finally, the whole delicate structure has been shielded
by a variety of protective coverings, and after months
and years of further elaboration and adjustment the
elaborate fabric is complete. Now all these com
plicated contrivances — bones, muscles, nerves, heart,
brain, lungs — are made out of cells ; they are them
selves, and in their furthest development, simply
masses or suites of cells modified in various ways for
the special department of household work they are
meant to serve. No new thing, except building
material, has entered into the embryo since its first
appearing. It seized whatever matter lay to hand,
incorporated it with its own quickening substance, and
built it in to its appropriate place. So the structure
rose in size and symmetry, till the whole had climbed,
a miracle of unfolding, to the stature of a Man.

But the beauty of this development is not the sig
nificant thing to the student of Evolution ; nor is it
the occultness of the process nor the perfection of the
result that fill him with awe as he surveys the finished
work. It is the immense distance Man has come.
5

G6 THE ASCENT OF THE BODY.

Between the early cell and the infant's formed body,
the ordinary observer sees the uneventful passage of
a few brief months. But the evolutionist sees con
centrated into these few months the labor and the
progress of incalculable ages. Here before him is the
whole stretch of time since life first dawned upon the
earth ; and as he watches the nascent organism climb
ing to its maturity he witnesses a spectacle which for
strangeness and majesty stands alone in the field of
biological research. What lie sees is not the mere
shaping or sculpturing of a Man. The human form
does not begin as a human form. It begins as an
animal ; and at first, and for a long time to come there
is nothing wearing the remotest semblance of human
ity. What meets the eye is a vast procession of lower
forms of life, a succession of strange inhuman creat
ures emerging from a crowd of still stranger and still
more inhuman creatures; and it is only after a pro
longed and unrecognizable series of metamorphoses
that they culminate in some faint likeness to the im
age of him who is one of the newest yet the oldest of
created things. Hitherto we have been taught to look
among the fossiliferous formations of Geology for the
buried lives of the earth's past. But Embryology has
startled the world by declaring that the ancient life of
the earth is not dead. It is risen. It exists to-day in
the embryos of still-living things, and some of the
most archaic types find again a resurrection and a life
in the frame of man himself.

It is an amazing and almost incredible story. The
proposition is not only that Man begins his earthly
existence in the guise of a lower animal-embryo, but
that in the successive transformations of the human

TUE ASCENT OF THE BODY.

embryo there is reproduced before our eyes a visible,
actual, physical representation of part of the life-
history of the world. Human Embryology is a con
densed account, a recapitulation or epitome of some of
the main chapters in the Natural History of the world.
The same processes of development which once
took thousands of years for their consummation are
here condensed, foreshortened, concentrated into the
space of weeks. Each platform reached by the human
embryo in its upward course represents the embryo of
some lower animal which in some mysterious way has
played a part in the pedigree of the human race, which
may itself have disappeared long since from the earth,
but is now and forever built into the inmost being of
Man. These lower animals, each at its successive
stage, have stopped short in their development ; Man
has gone on. A'; each fresh advance his embryo is
found again abreast of some other animal-embryo a
little higher in organization than that just passed.
Continuing his ascent that also is overtaken, the now
very complex embryo making up to one animal-em
bryo after another until it has distanced all in its series
and stands alone. As the modern stem-winding watch
contains the old clepsydra and all the most useful
features in all the timekeepers that were ever made ;
as the Walter printing-press contains the rude hand-
machine of Gutenberg, and all the best in all the
machines that followed it ; as the modern locomotive
of to-day contains the engine of Watt, the locomotive
of Iledley, and most of the improvements of succeeding
years, so Man contains the embryonic bodies of earlier
and humbler and clumsier forms of life. Yet in
making the Walter press in a modern workshop, the

68 THE ASCENT OF THE BODY.

artificer does not begin by building again the press oi
Gutenberg, nor in constructing the locomotive does
the engineer first make a Watt's machine and then
incorporate the Hedley, and then the Stephenson, and
so on through all the improving types of engines that
have led up to this. But the astonishing thing is that,
in making a Man, Nature does introduce the frame
work of these earlier types, displaying each crude
pattern by itself before incorporating it in the finished
work. The human embryo, to change the figure, is a
subtle phantasmagoria, a living theatre in which a
weird transformation scene is being enacted, and in
which countless strange and uncouth characters take
part. Some of these characters are well-known to
science, some are strangers. As the embryo unfolds,
one by one these animal actors come upon the stage,
file past in phantom-like procession, throw off their
drapery, and dissolve away into something else. Yet,
as they vanish, each leaves behind a vital portion of
itself, some original and characteristic memorial, some
thing itself has made or won, that perhaps it alone
could make or win— a bone, a muscle, a ganglion, or a
tooth— to be the inheritance of the race. And it is
only after nearly all have played their part and dedi
cated their gift, that a human form, mysteriously
compounded of all that has gone before, begins to be
discerned in their midst.

The duration of this process, the profound antiquity
of the last survivor, the tremendous height he has
scaled, are inconceivable by the faculties of Man. But
measure the very lowest of the successive platforms
passed in the ascent, and see how very great a thing
it is even to rise at all. The single cell, the first

THE ASCENT OF THE BODY. 69

definite stage which the human embryo attains, is still
the adult form of countless millions both of animals
and plants. Just as in modern England the million
aire's mansion— the evolved form-is surrounded by
laborers' cottages— the simple form— so in Nature,
living side by side with the many-celled higher ani
mals, is an immense democracy of unicellular artizans.
These simple cells are perfect living things. The
earth, the water, and the air teem with them every
where. They move, they eat, they reproduce their
like. But one thing they do not do— they do not rise.
These organisms have, as it were, stopped short in the
ascent of life. And long as evolution has worked
upon the earth, the vast numerical majority of plants
and animals are still at this low stage of being. So
minute are some of these forms that if their one-
roomed huts were arranged in a row it would take
twelve thousand to form a street a single inch in
length. In their watery cities— for most of them are
Lake-Dwellers— a population of eight hundred thou
sand million could be accommodated within a cubic
inch. Yet, as there was a period in human history
when none but cave-dwellers lived in Europe, so was
there a time when the highest forms of life upon the
globe were these microscopic things. See, therefore,
the meaning of Evolution from the want of it. In a
single hour or second the human embryo attains the
platform which represents the whole life-achievement
of myriads of generations of created things, and the
next day or hour is immeasurable centuries beyond

them.

Through all what zoological regions the embryo
passes in its great ascent from the one-celled forms,

70 THE ASCENT OF THE BODY.

one can never completely tell. The changes succeed
one another with such rapidity that it is impossible
at each separate stage, to catch the actual likeness
to other embryos. Sometimes a familiar feature sud
denly recalls a form well-known to science, but the
likeness fades, and the developing embryo seems to
wander among the ghosts of departed types. Long
ago these crude ancestral forms were again the high
est animals upon the earth. For a few thousand
years they reigned supreme, furthered the universal
evolution by a hair-breadth, and passed away. The
material dust of their bodies is laid long since in the
Palaeozoic rocks, but their life and labor are not
forgotten. For their gains were handed on to a suc
ceeding race. Transmitted thence through an endless
series of descendants, sifted, enriched, accentuated,
still dimly recognizable, they re-appeared at last in
the physical frame of Man. After the early stages of
human development are passed, the transformations
become so definite that the features of the contrib
utory animals are almost recognizable. Here, for
example, is a stage at which the embryo in its ana
tomical characteristics resembles that of the Vermes
or Worms. As yet there is no head, nor neck, nor
backbone, nor waist, nor limbs. A roughly cylindri
cal headless trunk — that is all that stands for the
future man. One by one the higher Invertebrates are
left behind, and then occurs the most remarkable
change in the whole life-history. This is the laying
down of the line to be occupied by the spinal chord,
the presence of which henceforth will determine the
place of Man in the Vertebrate sub-kingdom. At this
crisis, the eye which sweeps the field of lower Native

THE ASCENT OF THE HODY. 71

for an analogue will readily find it. It is a circum
stance of extraordinary interest that there should be
living upon the globe at this moment an animal
representing the actual transition from Invertebrate
to Vertebrate life. The acquisition of a vertebral
column is one of the great marks of height which
Nature has bestowed upon her creatures ; and in the
shallow waters of the Mediterranean she has pre
served for us a creature which, whether degenerate
or not, can only be likened to one of her first rude
experiments in this direction. This animal is the
Lancelot, or Amphioxus, and so rudimentary is the
backbone that it does not contain any bone at all, but
only a shadow or prophecy of it in cartilage. The
cartilaginous notoc/iord of the Amphioxus nevertheless
is the progenitor of all vertebral columns, and in the
first instance this structure appears in the human
embryo exactly as it now exists in the Lancelot. But
this is only a single example. In living Nature there
are a hundred other animal characteristics which at
one stage or another the biologist may discern in the
ever-changing kaleidoscope of the human embryo.

Even with this addition, nevertheless, the human
infant is but a first rough draft, an almost formless
lump of clay. As yet there is no distinct head, no,
brain, no jaws, no limbs; the heart is imperfect, the
higher visceral organs are feebly developed, every
thing is elementary. But gradually new organs loom
in sight, old ones increase in complexity. By a magic
which has never yet been fathomed the hidden Potter
shapes and re-shapes the day. The whole grows in
size and symmetry. Resemblances, this time, to
the embryos of the lower vertebrate series, flash out as

72 77/7? ASCENT OF THE JIODY.

each new step is .attained— first the semblance of the
Fish, then of the Amphibian, then of the Reptile, last
of the Mammal. Of these great groups the leading
embryonic characters appear as in a moving pano
rama, some of them pronounced and unmistakable,
others mere sketches, suggestions, likenesses of infinite
subtlety. At last the true Mammalian form emerges
from the crowd. Far ahead of all at this stage stand
out three species — the Tailed Catarrhine Ape, the Tail
less Catarrhine, and last, differing physically from
these mainly by an enlargement of the brain and a
development of the larynx, Man.

Whatever views be held of the doctrine of Evolu
tion, whatever theories of its cause, these facts of
Embryology are proved. They have taken their place
in science wholly apart from the discussion of theories
of Evolution, and as the result of laboratory investi
gation, made for quite other ends. What is true for
Man, moreover, is true of all other animals. Every
creature that lives climbs up its own genealogical tree
before it reaches its mature condition. " All animals
living, or that ever have lived, are united together by
blood relationship of varying nearness or remoteness,
and every animal now in existence has a pedigree
stretching back, not merely for ten or a hundred
generations, but through all geologic time since life
first commenced on the earth. The study of develop
ment has revealed to us that each animal bears the
mark of its ancestry, and is compelled to discover its
parentage in its own development ; the phases through
which an animal passes in its progress from the egg to
the adult are no accidental freaks, no mere matters of
developmental convenience, but represent more or less

THE ASCENT OF THE BODY. 73

closely, in more or less modified manner, the suc
cessive ancestral stages through which the present
condition has been acquired." l Almost foreseen by
Agassiz, suggested by Von Baer, and finally applied
by Fritz Miiller, this singular law is the key-note of
modern Embryology. In no case, it is true, is the
recapitulation of the past complete. Ancestral stages
are constantly omitted, others are over-accentuated,
condensed, distorted, or confused ; while new and un
decipherable characters occasionally appear. But it is
a general scientific fact, that over the graves of a
m}7riad aspirants the bodies of Man and of all higher
Animals have risen. No one knows why this should
be so. Science, at present, has no rationale of the
process adequate to explain it. It was formerly held
that the entire animal creation had contributed some
thing to the anatomy of Man ; or that as Serres ex
pressed it, " Human Organogenesis is a transitory
Comparative Anatomy." But though Man has not
such a monopoly of the past as is here inferred —
other types having here and there diverged and devel
oped along lines of their own — it is certain that the
materials for his body have been brought together
from an unknown multitude of lowlier forms of life.

Those who know the Cathedral of St. Mark's will re
member how this noblest of the Stones of Venice owes
its greatness to the patient hands of centuries and
centuries of workers, how every quarter of the globe
has been spoiled of its treasures to dignify this single
shrine. But he who ponders over the more ancient
temple of the Human Body will find imagination fail

1 Marshall, Vertebrate Embryology, p. 26.

74 THE ASCENT OF THE BODY.

him as he tries to think from what remote and min
gled sources, from what lands, seas, climates, atmos
pheres, its various parts have been called together,
and by what innumerable contributory creatures,
swimming, creeping, flying, climbing, each of its
several members was wrought and perfected. What
ancient chisel first sculptured the rounded columns of
the limbs ? What dead hands built the cupola of the
brain, and from what older ruins were the scattered
pieces of its mosaic- work brought ? Who fixed the
windows in its upper walls? What winds and
weathers wrought strength into its buttresses ? What
ocean-beds and forest glades worked up its colorings ?
What Love and Terror and Night called forth the
Music? And what Life and Death and Pain and
Struggle put all together in the noiseless workshop of
the past, and removed eacli worker silently when its
task was done? How these things came to be Biology
is one long record. The architects and builders of
this mighty temple are not anonymous. Their names,
and the work they did, are graven forever on the walls
and arches of the Human Embryo. For this is a
volume of that Book in which Man's members were
written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as
yet there was none of them.

The Descent of Man from the Animal Kingdom is
sometimes spoken of as a degradation. It is an un
speakable exaltation. Recall the vast antiquity of
that primal cell from which the human embryo first
sets forth. Compass the nature of the potentialities
stored up in its plastic substance. Watch all the
busy processes, the multiplying energies, the mystify
ing transitions, the inexplicable chemistry of this liv*

THE ASCENT OF THE BODY. 75

ing laboratory. Observe the variety and intricacy of
its metamorphoses, the exquisite gradation of its as
cent, the unerring aim with which the one type un
folds—never pausing, never uncertain of its direction,
refusing arrest at intermediate forms, passing on to
its flawless maturity without waste or effort or
fatigue. See the sense of motion at every turn, of
purpose and of aspiration. Discover how, with iden
tity of process and loyalty to the type, a hair-breadth
of deviation is yet secured to each so that no two
forms come out the same, but each arises an original
creation, with features, characteristics, and individual
ities of its own. Remember, finally, that even to
make the first cell possible, stellar space required to
be swept of matter, suns must needs be broken up,
and planets cool, the agents of geology labor millen
nium after millennium at the unfinished earth to pre
pare a material resting-place for the coming guest.
Consider all this, and judge if Creation could have a
sublimer meaning, or the Human Race possess a more
splendid genesis.

From the lips of the Prophet another version, an
old and beautiful story, was told to the childhood of
the earth, of how God made Mini ; how with His own
hands lie gathered the Bactrian dust, modelled it,
breathed upon it, and it became a living soul. Later,
the insight of the Hebrew Poet taught Man a deeper
lesson. He saw that there was more in Creation than
mechanical production. He saw that the Creator had
different kinds of Hands and different ways of model
ling. How it was done he knew not, but it was not
the surface thing his forefathers taught him. The
higher divinity and mystery of the process broke upon

76 THE ASCENT OF THE BODY.

him. Man was a fearful and wonderful thing. lie
was modelled in secret. He was curiously wrought in
the lowest parts of the earth. When Science came, it
was not to contradict the older versions. It but gave
them content and a still richer meaning. What the
Prophet said, and the Poet saw, and Science proved,
all and equally will abide forever. For all alike are
voices of the Unseen, commissioned to different peo
ples and for different ends to declare the mystery of
the Ascent of Man.

CHAPTER II.

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY.

THE spectacle which we have just witnessed is in
visible, and therefore more or less unimpressive, ex
cept to the man of science. Embryology works in the
dark. Requiring not only the microscope, but the
comparative knowledge of intricate and inaccessible
forms of life, its all but final contribution to the
theory of Evolution carries no adequate conviction to
the general mind. We must therefore follow the fort
unes of the Body further into the open day. If the
Embryo in every changing feature of its growth con
tains some reminiscence of an animal ancestry, the
succeeding stages of its development may be trusted
to carry on the proof. And though here the evidence
is neither so beautiful nor so exact, we shall find that
there is in the adult frame, and even in the very life
and movement of the new-born babe, a continuous
witness to the ancient animal strain.

We are met, unfortunately, at the outset by one of
those curious obstacles to inquiry which have so often
barred the way of truth and turned discovery into
ridicule. It happens that the class of animals in
which Science, in the very nature of the case, is com-

77

78 THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY.

pelled to look for the closest affinities to human beings
is that of the Apes. This simple circumstance has
told almost fatally against the wide acceptance of the
theory of Descent. There is just as much truth in the
sarcasm that man is a " reformed monkey " as to pre
judge the question to the unscientific mind. But the
statement is no nearer the truth itself than if one were
to say that a gun is an adult form of the pistol. The
connection, if any, between Man and Ape is simply
that the most Man-like thing in creation is the Ape,
and that, in his Ascent, Man probably passed through
a stage when he more nearly resembled the Ape than
any other known animal. Apart from that accident,
Evolution owes no more to the Ape than to any other
creature. Man and Ape are alike in being two of the
latest terms of an infinite series, each member of
which has had a share in making up the genealogical
tree. To single out the Ape, therefore, and use the
hypothetical relationship for rhetorical purposes is, to
say the least, unscientific. It is certainly the fact
that Man is not descended from any existing Ape.
The Anthropoid Apes branched off laterally at a
vastly remote period from the nearest human progen
itors. The challenge even to produce links between
Man and the living man-like Apes is difficult to take
seriously. Should any one so violate the first princi
ples of Evolution as to make it, it is only to be said
that it cannot be met. For an Anthropoid Ape could
as little develop into a Man as could a Man pass back
wards into an Anthropoid Ape. References to a Sim
ian stem play no necessary part in the story of the
Ascent of Man. In those pages the compromising
name will scarcely occur. If historical sequence com-

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY. 79

pels us to make an apparent exception here at the
very outset, it will be seen that the allusion is harm
less. For the analogy we are about to make might
with equal relevancy have been drawn from a squirrel
or a sloth.

On the theory that human beings were once allied
in habit as well as in body with some of the Apes, that
they probably lived in trees, and that baby-men clung
to their climbing mothers as baby-monkeys do to-day,
Dr. Louis Robinson prophesied that a baby's power of
grip might be found to be comparable in strength to
that of a young monkey at the same period of develop
ment. Having special facilities for such an investiga
tion, he tested a large number of just-born infants
with reference to this particular. Now although most
people have some time or other been seized in the
awful grasp of a baby, few have any idea of the abnor
mal power locked up in the tentacles of this human
octopus. Dr. Robinson's method was to extend to
infants, generally of one hour old, his ringer, or a
walking stick, to imitate the branch of a tree, and see
how long they would hang there without, what the
newspapers call, "any other visible means of support."
The results are startling. Dr. Robinson has records
of upwards of sixty cases in which the children were
under a month old, and in at least half of these the ex
periment was tried within an hour of birth : " In every
instance, with only two exceptions, the child was able
to hang on to the finger or a small stick, three-
quarters of an inch in diameter, by its hands, like an
acrobat from a horizontal bar, and sustain the whole
weight of its body for at least ten seconds. In twelve
cases, in infants under an hour old, half a minute

80 THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY.

passed before the grasp relaxed, and in three or four
nearly a minute. When about four days old, I found
that the strength had increased, and that nearly all,
when tried at this age, could sustain their weight for
half a minute. About a fortnight or three weeks after
birth the faculty appeared to have attained its maxi
mum, for several at this period succeeded in hanging
for over a minute and a half, two for just over two
minutes, and one infant of three weeks old for two
minutes thirty-five seconds. ... In one instance, in
which the performer had less than one hour's expe
rience of life, he hung by both hands to my forefinger
for ten seconds, and then deliberately let go with his
right hand (as if to seek a better hold), and main
tained his position for five seconds more by the left
hand only. Invariably the thighs are bent nearly at
right angles to the body, and in no case did the lower
limbs hang down and take the attitude of the erect
position. This attitude, and the disproportionately
large development of the arms compared with the legs,
give the photographs a striking resemblance to a well-
known picture of the celebrated Chimpanzee Sally at
the Zoological Garden. I think it will be acknowl
edged that the remarkable strength shown in the
flexor muscle of the fore-arm in these young infants,
especially when compared with the flaccid and feeble
state of the muscular system generally, is a suffi
ciently striking phenomenon to provoke inquiry as to
its cause and origin. The fact that a three-week old
baby can perform a feat of muscular strength that
would tax the powers of many a healthy adult
is enough to set one wondering. A curious point is
that in many cases no sign of distress is evident,

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY. 81

and no cry uttered until the grasp begins to give
way." l

Place side by side with this the following account,
which Mr. Wallace gives us in his Malay Archipelago,
of a baby Orang-outang, whose mother he happened
to shoot :

" This little creature was only about a foot long,
and had, evidently been hanging to its mother when
she first fell. Luckily it did not appear to have been
wounded, and after we had cleaned the mud out of its
mouth it began to cry out, and seemed quite strong
and active. While carrying it home it got its hands
in my beard, and grasped so tightly that I had great
difficulty in getting free, for the fingers are habitually
bent inward at the last joint so as to form complete
hooks. For the first few days it clung desperately
with all four hands to whatever it could lay hold of,
and I had to be careful to keep my beard out of its
way, as its fingers clutched hold of hair more tena
ciously than anything else, and it was impossible to
free myself without assistance. When restless, it
would struggle about with its hands up in the air try
ing to find something to take hold of, and when it had
got a bit of stick or rag in two or three of its hands,
seemed quite happy. For want of something else, it
would often seize its own feet, and after a time ifc
would constantly cross its arms and grasp with each
hand the long hair that grew just below the opposite
shoulder. The great tenacity of its grasp soon dimin
ished, and I was obliged to invent some means to give
it exercise and strengthen its limbs. For this purpose

1 Nineteenth Century, November, 1301.

82 THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY.

I made a short ladder of three or four rounds, on
which I put it to hang for a quarter of an hour at a
time. At first it seemed much pleased, but it could
not get all four hands in a comfortable position, and,
after changing about several times, would leave hold
of one hand after the other and drop on to the floor.
Sometimes when hanging only by two hands, it would
loose one, and cross it to the opposite shoulder, grasp
ing its own hair ; and, as this seemed much more
agreeable than the stick, it would then loose the other
and tumble down, when it would cross both and lie
on its back quite contentedly, never seeming to be
hurt by its numerous tumbles. Finding it so fond
of hair, I endeavored to make an artificial mother, by
wrapping up a piece of buffalo-skin into a bundle, and
suspending it about a foot from the floor. At first
this seemed to suit it admirably, as it could sprawl
its legs about and always find some hair, which it
grasped with the greatest tenacity." l

Whatever the value of these facts as evidence, they
form an interesting if slight introduction to the part
of the subject that lies before us. For we have now
to explore the Body itself for actual betrayals— not
mere external movements which might have come as
well from early Man as from later animal ; but ver
itable physical survivals, the material scaffolding
itself — of the animal past. And the facts here are as
numerous and as easily grasped as they are authentic.
As the traveller, wandering in foreign lands, brings
back all manner of curios to remind him where he has
been — clubs and spears, clothes and pottery, which

1 Malay Archij>ela<jo, 5o-5.

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY. 33

represent the ways of life of those whom he has met —
so the body of Man, emerging from its age-long jour
ney through the animal kingdom, appears laden with
the spoils of its distant pilgrimage. These relics are
not mere curiosities ; they are as real as the clubs and
spears, the clothes and pottery. Like them, they were
once a part of life's vicissitude ; they represent organs
which have been outgrown ; old forms of apparatus
long since exchanged for better, yet somehow not yet
destroyed by the hand of time. The physical body of
Man, so great is the number of these relics, is an old
curiosity shop, a museum of obsolete anatomies, dis
carded tools, outgrown and aborted organs. All other
animals also contain among their useful organs a
proportion which are long past their work ; and so
significant are these rudiments of a former state of
things, that anatomists have often expressed their
willingness to stake the theory of Evolution upon their
presence alone.

Prominent among these vestigial structures, as they
are called, are those which smack of the sea. If Em
bryology is any guide to the past, nothing is more
certain than that the ancient progenitors of Man once
lived an aquatic life. At one time there was nothing
else in the world but water-life ; all the land animals
are late inventions. One reason why animals began
in the water is that it is easier to live in the water —
anatomically and physiologically cheaper — than to live,
on the land. The denser element supports the body
better, demanding a less supply of muscle and bone ;
and the perpetual motion of the sea brings the food to
the animal, making it unnecessary for the animal to
move to the food. This and other correlated circum-

84 THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY.

stances calls for far less mechanism in the body, and,
as a matter of fact, all the simplest forms of life at
the present day are inhabitants of the water.

A successful attempt at coming ashore may be seen
in the common worm. The worm is still so unac-
climatized to land life that instead of living on the
earth like other creatures, it lives in it, as if it were
a thicker water, and always where there is enough
moisture to keep up the traditions of its past. Prob
ably it took to the shore originally by exchanging,
first the water for the ooze at the bottom, then by
wriggling among muddy flats when the tide was out,
and finally, as the struggle for life grew keen, it
pushed further and further inland, continuing its
migration so long as dampness was to be found.

More striking examples are found among the mol
luscs, the sea-iaring animals par excellence of the past.
A snail wandering over the earth with a sea-shell on
its back is one of the most anomalous sights in nature

as preposterous as the spectacle of a Red Indian

perambulating Paris with a birch canoe on his head.
The snail not only carries this relic of the sea every
where with it, but when it cannot get moisture to
remind it of its ancient habitat, it actually manufact
ures it. That the creature itself has discovered the
anomaly of its shell is obvious, for in almost every
class its state of dilapidation betrays that its up-keep
is no longer an object of much importance. In nearly
every species the stony houses have already lost their
doors, and most have their shells so reduced in size
that not half of the body can get in. The degenera
tion in their cousins, the slugs, is even more pathetic.
All that remains of the ancestral home in the highest

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IX THE BODY.

ranks is a limpet-like cap on the tip of the tail ; the
lowest are sans everything; and in the intermediate
forms the former glory is ironically suggested by a
few grains of sand or a tiny shield so buried beneath
the skin that only the naturalist's eye can see it.

When Man left the water, however— or what was to
develop into Man— he took very much more ashore
with him than a shell. Instead of crawling ashore at
the worm stage, he remained in the water until he
evolved into something like a fish ; so that when,
after an amphibian interlude, he finally left it, many
"ancient and fish-like" characters remained in his
body to tell the tale. The chief characteristic of a
fish is its apparatus for breathing the air dissolved in
the water. This consists of gills— delicate curtains
hung on strong arches and dyed scarlet with the blood
which continually courses through them. In many
fishes these arches are five or seven in number, and
communicating with them— in order to allow the
aerated water, which has been taken in at the mouth,
to pass out again after bathing the gills— an equal
number of slits or openings is provided in the neck.
Sometimes the slits are bare and open so that they are
easily seen on the fish's neck— any one who looks at a
shark will see them — but in modern forms they are
generally covered by the operculum or lid. Without
these holes in their neck all fishes would instantly
perish, and we may be sure Nature took exceptional
care in perfecting this particular piece of the
mechanism.

Now it is one of the most extraordinary facts in
natural history that these slits in the fish's neck are
still represented in the neck of Man. Almost the

80 '1HE SCAFFOLDINd LEFT IN THE BODY.

most prominent feature, indeed, after the head, in
svery mammalian embryo, are the four clefts or fur
rows of the old gill-slits. They are still known in
Embryology by the old name — gill-slits — and so per
sistent are those characters that children are known
to have been born with them not only externally
visible — whicK is a common occurrence — but open
through and chrough, so that fluids taken in at the
mouth could pass through and trickle out at the neck.
This last fact was so astounding as to be for a long
time denied. It was thought that, when this hap
pened, the orifice must have been accidentally made
by the probe of the surgeon. But Dr. Sutton has
recently met with actual cases where this has
occurred. "I have seen milk," he says, "issue from
such fistulse in individuals who have never been
submitted to sounding."1 In the common case of
children born with these vestiges, the old gill-slits are
represented by small openings in the skin on the sides
of the neck, and capable of admitting a thin probe.
Sometimes even the place where they have been in
childhood is marked throughout life by small round
patches of white skin.

Almost more astonishing than the fact of their
persistence is the use to which Nature afterwards put
them. When the fish came ashore, its water-breath
ing apparatus was no longer of any use to it. At first
it had to keep it on, for it took a long time to perfect
the air-breathing apparatus destined to replace it.
But when this was ready the problem arose, What
was to be done with the earlier organ? Nature is

1 Evolution and Disease, p. 81.

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY. 87

exceedingly economical, and could not throw all this
mechanism away. In fact, Nature almost never parts
with any structure she has once made. What she
does is to change it into something else. Conversely,
Nature seldom makes anything new; her method
of creation is to adapt something old. Now, when
Nature had done with the old breathing-apparatus,
she proceeded to adapt it for a new and important
purpose. She saw that if water could pass through
a hole in the neck, air could pass through likewise.
But it was no longer necessary that air should pass
through for purposes of breathing^ for that was
already provided for by the mouth. Was there any
other purpose for which it was desirable that air
should enter the body ? There was, and a very subtle
one. For Jiearing. Sound is the result of a wave-
motion conducted by many things, but in a special
way by air. To leave holes in the head was to let
sound into the head. The mouth might have done for
this, but the mouth had enough to do as it was, and,
moreover, it must often be shut. In the old days,
certainly, sound was conveyed to fishes in a dull way
without any definite opening. But animals which
live in water do not seem to use hearing much, and
the sound-waves in fishes are simply conveyed
through the walls of the head to the internal ear with
out any definite mechanism. But as soon as land-life
began, owing to the changed medium through which
sound-waves must now be propagated, and the new
uses for sound itself, a more delicate instrument was
required. And hence one of the first things attended
to as the evolution went on was the construction and
improvement of the ear. And this seems to have been

88 THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY.

mainly effected by a series of remarkable develop
ments of one of the now superfluous gill-slits.

It has long been a growing certainty to Comparative
Anatomy that the external and middle ear in Man are
simply a development, an improved edition, of the
first gill-cleft and its surrounding parts. The tym-
pano-Eustachian passage is the homologue or counter
part of the spiracle associated in the shark with the
first gill-opening. Prof. His of Leipsic has worked
out the whole development in minute detail, and con
clusively demonstrated the mode of origin of the
external ear from the coalescence of six rounded
tubercles surrounding the first branchial cleft at an
early period of embryonic life.1

1 Haeckel has given an earlier account of the process in the
following words :— " All the essential parts of the middle ear— the
tympanic membrane, tympanic cavity, and Eustachian tube-
develop from the first gill-opening with its surrounding parts,
which in the Primitive Fishes (Selachii) remains throughout life
as an open blow-hole, situated between the first and second gill-
arches. In the embryos of higher Vertebrates it closes in the
centre, the point of concrescence forming the tympanic mem
brane. The remaining outer part of the first gill-opening is the
rudiment of the outer ear-canal. From the inner part originates
the tympanic cavity, and further inward, the Eustachian tube.
In connection with these, the three bonelets of the ear develop
from the first two gill-arches ; the hammer and anvil from the
first, and the stirrup from the upper end of the second gill-arch.
Finally, as regards the external ear, the ear-shell (concha atiris),
and the outer ear canal, leading from the shell to the tympanic
membrane — these parts develop in the simplest way from the skin
covering which borders the outer orifice of the first gill-opening.
At this point the ear-shell rises in the form of a circular fold of
skin, in which cartilage and muscles afterwards form/' — Haeckel,
Evolution of Man, Vol. n., p. 269.

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE HODY. 89

Now, bearing in mind this theory of the origin
of ears, an extraordinary corroboration confronts us.
Ears are actually sometimes found bursting out in
human beings half-way down the neck, in the exact
position— namely, along the line of the anterior
border of the sterno-mastoid muscle— which the
gill-slits would occupy if they still persisted. In
some human families, where the tendency to retain
these special structures is strong, one member
sometimes illustrates the abnormality by possessing
the clefts alone, another has a cervical ear, while a
third has both a cleft and a neck-ear—all these,
of course, in addition to the ordinary ears. This
cervical auricle lias all the characters of the
ordinary ear, "it contains yellow elastic cartilage,
is skin-covered, and has muscle-fibre attached to
it." x Dr. Button calls attention to the fact that on
ancient statues of fauns and satyrs cervical auricles
are sometimes found, and he figures the head of a
satyr from the British Museum, carved long before
the days of anatomy, where a sessile ear on the neck
is quite distinct. A still better illustration may be
seen in the Art Museum at Boston on a full-sized
cast of a faun, belonging to the later Greek period;
and there are other examples in the same building.
One interest of these neck-ears in statues is that they
are not, as a rule, modelled after the human ear, but
taken from the cervical ear of the goat, from which
the general idea of the faun was derived. This shows
that neck-ears were common on the goats of that
period as they are on goats to this day. The occur-

iSutton, Erolution and Disease, p. 87.

90 THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY.

rence of neck-ears in goats is no more than one would
expect. Indeed, one would look for them not only in
goats and in Man, but in all the Mammalia, for so far
as their bodies are concerned all the higher animals are
near relations. Observations on vestigial structures
in animals are sadly wanting ; but these cervical ears
are also certainly found in the horse, pig, sheep, and
others.

That the human ear was not always the squat and
degenerate instrument it is at present may be seen by
a critical glance at its structure. Mr. Darwin records
how a celebrated sculptor called his attention to a lit
tle peculiarity in the external ear, which he had often
noticed both in men and women. " The peculiarity
consists in a little blunt point, projecting from the
inwardly folded margin or helix. When present, it is
developed at birth, and, according to Professor Ludwig
Meyer, more frequently in man than in woman. The
helix obviously consists of the extreme margin of the
ear folded inwards ; and the folding appears to be in
some manner connected with the whole external ear
being permanently pressed backwards. In many
monkeys who do not stand high in the order, as
baboons and some species of macacus, the upper por
tion of the ear is slightly pointed, and the margin
is not at all folded inwards; but if the margin were to
be thus folded, a slight point would necessarily project
towards the centre." l Here, then, in this discovery of
the lost tip of the ancestral ear, is further and visible
advertisement of Man's Descent, a surviving symbol of
the stirring times and dangerous days of his animal

1 Descent of Man, p. 15.

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE P>OI)Y. 01

youth. It is difficult to imagine any other theory than
that of Descent which could account for all these facts.
That Evolution should leave such clues lying about is
at least an instance of its candor.

But this does not exhaust the betrayals of this most
confiding organ. If we turn from the outward ear to
the muscular apparatus for working it, fresh traces of
its animal career are brought to light. The erection
of the ear, in order to catch sound better, is a power
possessed by almost all mammals, and the attached
muscles are large and greatly developed in all but
domesticated forms. This same apparatus, though he
makes no use of it whatever, is still attached to the
ears of Man. It is so long since he relied on the warn
ings of hearing, that by a well-known law, the mus
cles have fallen into disuse and atrophied. In many
cases, however, the power of twitching the ear is not
wholly lost, and every school-boy can point to some
one in his class who retains the capacity, and is apt to
revive it in irrelevant circumstances.

One might run over all the other organs of the
human body and show their affinities with animal
structures and an animal past. The twitching of the
ear, for instance, suggests another obsolete, or obso
lescent power — the power, or rather the set of powers,
for twitching the skin, especially the skin of the scalp
and forehead by which we raise the eyebrows. Sub
cutaneous muscles for shaking off flies from the skin,
or for erecting the hair of the scalp, are common
among quadrupeds, and these are represented in the
human subject by the still functioning muscles of the
forehead, and occasionally of the head itself. Every
one has met persons who possess the power of moving

9-2 THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY.

the whole scalp to and fro, and the muscular apparatus
for effecting it is identical with what is normally found
in some of the Quadrumana.

Another typical vestigial structure is the plica
semi-lunaris, the remnant of the nictitating mem
brane characteristic of nearly the whole vertebrate
sub-kingdom. This membrane is a semi-transparent
curtain which can be drawn rapidly across the ex
ternal surface of the eye for the purpose of sweeping
it clean. In birds it is extremely common, but it also
exists in fish, mammals, and all the other vertebrates.
Where it is not found of any functional value it is
almost always represented by vestiges of some kind.
In Man ail that is left of it is a little piece of the
curtain draped at the side of the eye.

Passing from the head to the other extremity of the
body one comes upon a somewhat unexpected but
very pronounced characteristic — the relic of the tail,
and not only of the tail, but of muscles for wagging it.
Every one who first sees a human skeleton is amazed
at this discovery. At the end of the vertebral column,
curling faintly outward in suggestive fashion, are
three, four, and occasionally five vertebrae forming the
coccyx, a true rudimentary tail. In the adult this is
always concealed beneath the skin, but in the embryo,
both in Man and ape, at an early stage it is much
longer than the limbs. What is decisive as to its true
nature, however, is that even in the embryo of Man
the muscles for wagging it are still found. In the
grown-up human being these muscles are represented
by bands of fibrous tissue, but cases are known where
the actual muscles persist through life. That a dis
tinct external tail should not still be found in Man

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY. 93

may seem disappointing to the evolutionist. But the
want of a tail argues more for the theory of Evolution
than its presence would have done. For all the
anthropoids most allied to Man have long since also
parted with theirs.

With regard to the presence of Hair on the body,
and its disposition and direction, some curious facts
may be noticed. No one, until Evolution supplied the
impulse to a fresh study of the commonplace, thought
it worth while to study such trifles as the presence of
hair on the fingers and hands, and the slope of the
hair on the arms. But now that attention is called to
it, every detail is seen to be full of meaning. In all
men the rudimentary hair on the arm, from the wrist
to the elbow, points one way, from the elbow to the
shoulder it points the opposite way. In the first case
it points upwards from the wrist towards the elbow, •
in the other downwards from the shoulder to the
elbow. This occurs nowhere else in the animal king
dom, except among the anthropoid apes and a few
American monkeys, and has to do with the arboreal
habit. As Mr. Romanes, who has pointed this out,
explains it, "When sitting on trees, the Orang, as
observed by Wallace, places its hands above its head
with its elbows pointing downwards ; the disposition
of hair on the arms and fore-arms then has the effect
of thatch in turning the rain. Again, I find that in
all species of apes, monkeys, and baboons which I
have examined (and they have been numerous), the
hair on the back of the hands and feet is continued as
far as the first row of phalanges ; but becomes scanty,
or disappears altogether, on the second row. I also
find that the same peculiarity occurs in man. We

94 THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY.

have all rudimentary hair on the first row of pha
langes, botli of hands and feet ; when present at all, it
is more scanty on the second row: and in no case
have I been able to find any on the terminal row. In
all cases those peculiarities are congenital, and the
total absence or partial presence of hair on the second
phalanges is constant in different species of Quad-
rumana. . . . The downward direction of the hair on
the backs of the hands is exactly the same in man as
it is in all the anthropoid apes. Again, with regard
to hair, Darwin notices that occasionally there appear
in man a few hairs in the eyebrows much longer than
the others ; and that they seem to be a representation
of similarly long and scattered hairs which occur in
the chimpanzee, macacus, and baboon. Lastly, about
the sixth month the human foetus is often thickly
covered with somewhat long dark hair over the entire
body, except the soles of the feet and palms of the
hand, which are likewise bare in all quadrurnanous
animals. This covering, which is called the lanugo,
and sometimes extends even to the whole forehead,
ears, and face, is shed before birth. So that it
appears to be useless for any purpose other than that
of emphatically declaring man a child of the
monkey." l The uselessness of these relics, apart from
the remarkable and detailed nature of the homolo-
gies just brought out, is a circumstance very hard
to get over on any other hypothesis than that of
Descent.

Caution, of course, is required in deciding as to the
inutility of any character since its seeming uselessness

1 Darwin and After Darwin, pp. 89-92.

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY. 95

may only mean that we do not know its use. But
there are undoubtedly cases where we know that cer
tain vestigial structures are not only useless to Man
but worse than useless. Coming under this category
is perhaps the most striking of all the vestigial organs,
that of the Vermiform Appendix of the Caecum. Here
is a structure which is not only of no use to man now,
but is a veritable death-trap. In herbivorous animals
this "blind-tube" is very large — longer in some cases
than the body itself — and of great use in digestion, but
in Man it is shrunken into the merest rudiment, while
in the Orang-outang it is only a little larger. In the
human subject, owing to its diminutive size, it can be
of no use whatever, while it forms an easy receptacle
for the lodgment of foreign bodies, such as fruit-
stones, which set up inflammation, and in various
ways cause death. In Man this tube is the same in
structure as the rest of the intestine ; it is " covered
with peritoneum, possesses a muscular coat, and is
lined with mucous membrane. In the early embryo it
is equal in calibre to the rest of the bowel, but at a
certain date it ceases to grow pari passu with it, and
at the time of birth appears as a thin tubular appendix
to the caecum. In the newly-born child it is often
absolutely as long as in the full-grown man. This
precocity is always an indication that the part was
of great importance to the ancestors of the human
species." 1

So important is the key of Evolution to the modern
pathologist that in cases of malformation his first
resort is always to seek an explanation in earlier

1 Sutton, Evolution and Disease, p. G.">.

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY.

forms of life. It is found that conditions which are
pathological in one animal are natural in others of a
lower species. When any eccentricity appears in a
human body the anatomist no longer sets it down as
a freak of Nature, lie proceeds to match it lower
down. Mr. Darwin mentions a case of a man who,
in his foot alone, had no less than seven abnormal
muscles. Each of these was found among the muscles
of lower animals. Take, again, a common case of mal
formation—club-foot. All children before birth dis
play the most ordinary form of this deformity — that,
namely, where the sole is turned inwards and upwards
and the foot is raised — and it is only gradually that
the foot attains the normal adult position. The ab
normal position, abnormal that is in adult Man, is the
normal condition of things in the case of the gorilla.
Club-foot, hence, is simply gorilla-foot — a case of the
arrested development of a character which apparently
came along the line of the direct Simian stock. So
simple is this method of interpreting the present by
the past, and so fruitful, that the anatomist has been
able in many instances to assume the role of prophet.
Adult man possesses no more than twelve pair of ribs;
the prediction was hazarded by an older Comparative
Anatomy that in the embryonic state he would be
found with thirteen or fourteen. This prophecy has
since been verified. It was also predicted that at this
early stage he would be found to possess the insignifi
cant remnant of a very small bone in the wrist, the
so-called os centrale, which must have existed in the
adult condition of his extremely remote ancestors.
This prediction has also been fulfilled, as Weismann
aptly remarks, " just as the planet Xeptune was dis-

7771? SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE JiODY. 97

covered after its existence had been predicted from
the disturbances induced in the orbit of Uranus."1

But the enumeration becomes tedious. Though we
are only at the beginning of the list, sufficient has
been said to mark the interest of this part of the sub
ject, and the redundancy of the proof. In the human
body alone, there are at least seventy of these vesti
gial structures. Take away the theory that Man has
evolved from a lower animal condition, and there is
no explanation whatever of any one of these phe
nomena. With such facts before us, it is mocking
human intelligence to assure us that Man has not
some connection with the rest of the animal creation,
or that the processes of his development stand unre
lated to the other ways of Nature. That Providence,
in making a new being, should deliberately have
inserted these eccentricities, without their having any
real connection with the things they so well imitate,
or any working relation to the rest of his body is,
with our present knowledge, simple irreverence.

Were it the present object to complete a proof of
the descent of Man, one might go on to select from
other departments of science, evidence not less strik
ing than that from vestigial structures. From the
side of palaeontology it might be shown that Man
appears in the earth's crust like any other fossil, and
in the exact place where science would expect to find
him. When born, he is ushered into life like any
other animal ; he is subject to the same diseases ; he
yields to the same treatment. When fully grown
there is almost nothing in his anatomy to distinguish

1 Weisiuann, Bioloyical Memoir.*, p. 255.

98 THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY.

him from his nearest allies among other animals —
almost bone for bone, nerve for nerve, muscle for
muscle he is the same. There is in fact a body of
evidence now before science for the animal origin of
Man's physical frame which it is impossible for a
thinking mind to resist. Up to this point two only
out of the many conspiring lines of testimony have
been drawn upon for their contribution ; but enough
has been said to encourage us, with this as at least a
working theory, to continue the journey. It is the
Ascent of Man that concerns us and not the Descent.
And these amazing facts about the past are cited for
a larger purpose than to produce conviction on a point
which, after all, is of importance only in its higher
implications.

CHAPTEE III.

THE ARREST OF THE BODY.

" ON the Earth there will never be a higher Creat
ure than Man." 1 It is a daring prophecy, but every
probability of Science attests the likelihood of its ful
filment. The goal looked forward to from the begin
ning of time has been attained. Nature has succeeded
in making a Man; she can go no further; Organic
Evolution has done its work.

This is not a conceit of Science, nor a reminiscence
of the pre-Copernican idea that the centre of the
universe is the world, and the centre of the world
Man. It is the sober scientific probability that with
the body of Man the final fruit of the tree of Organic
Evolution has appeared ; that the highest possibilities
open to flesh and bone and nerve and muscle have
now been realized ; that in whatever direction, and
with whatever materials, Evolution still may work, it
will never produce any material thing more perfect in
design or workmanship ; that in Man, in short, about
this time in history, we are confronted with a stupen
dous crisis in Nature, — the Arrest of the Animal.

1 Fiske, Destiny of Man, p. 26. "What follows owes much to this
suggestive brochure.

99

100 THE ARREST OF THE BODY.

The Man, the Animal Man, the Man of Organic Evo
lution, it is at least certain, will not go on. It is
another Man who will go on, a Man within this Man ;
and that he may go on the first Man must stop, Let
us try for a moment to learn what it is to stop.
Nothing could teach Man better what is meant by
his going on.

One of the most perfect pieces of mechanism in the
human body is the Hand. How long it has taken to
develop may be dimly seen by a glance at the long
array of less accurate instruments of prehension
which shade away with ever decreasing delicacy and
perfectness as we descend the. scale of animal life. At
the bottom of that scale is the Amoeba. It is a speck
of protoplasmic jelly, headless, footless, and armless.
When it wishes to seize the microscopic particle of
food on which it lives a portion of its body lengthens
out, and, moving towards the object, flows over it, en
gulfs it, and melts back again into the body. This
is its Hand. At any place, and at any moment, it
creates a Hand. Each Hand is extemporized as it is
needed ; when not needed it is not. Pass a little
higher up the scale and observe the Sea-Anemone.
The Hand is no longer extemporized as occasion re
quires, but lengthened portions of the body are set
apart and kept permanently in shape for the purpose
of seizing food. Here, in the capital of twining ten
tacles which crowns the quivering pillar of the body,
we get the rude approximation to the most useful por
tion of the human Hand— the separated fingers. It is
a vast improvement on the earlier Hand, but the
jointless digits are still imperfect ; it is simply the
Amoeba Hand cut into permanent strips.

THE ARREST OF THE BODY. 101

Passing over a multitude of intermediate forms,
watch, in the next place, the Hand of an African
Monkey. Note the great increase in usefulness due to
the muscular arm upon which the Hand is now
extended, and the extraordinary capacity for varied
motion afforded by the threefold system of jointing
at shoulder, elbow, and wrist. The Hand itself is
almost the human Hand ; there are palm and nail and
articulated fingers. But observe how one circum
stance hinders the possessor from taking full advan
tage of these great improvements, — this Hand has no
thumb, or if it has, it is but a rudiment. To estimate
the importance of this apparently insignificant organ,
try for a moment without using the thumb to hold a
book, or write a letter, or do any single piece of man
ual work. A thumb is not merely an additional
finger, but a finger so arranged as to be opposable to
the other fingers, and thus possesses a practical efficacy
greater than all the fingers put together. It is this
which gives the organ the power to seize, to hold, to
manipulate, to do higher work ; this simple mechan
ical device in short endows the Hand of intelligence
with all its capacity and skill. Now there are ani
mals, like the Colobi, which have no thumb at all ;
there are others, like the Marmoset, which possess the
thumb, but in which it is not opposable ; and there
are others, the Chimpanzee for instance, in which the
Hand is in all essentials identical with Man's. In the
human form the thumb is a little longer, and the
whole member more delicate and shapely, but even
for the use of her highest product, Nature has not
been able to make anything much more perfect than
the hand of this anthropoid ape.

102 THE ARREST OF THE BODY.

Is the Hand then finished ? Can Nature take out
no new patent in this direction ? Is the fact that no
novelty is introduced in the case of Alan a proof that
the ultimate Hand has appeared ? By no means.
And yet it is probable for other reasons that the
ultimate Hand has appeared; that there will never be
a more perfectly handed animal than Man. And
why? Because the causes which up to this point
have furthered the evolution of the Hand have begun
to cease to act. In the perfecting of the bodily
organs, as of all other mechanical devices, necessity is
the mother of invention. As the Hand was given
more and more to do, it became more and more
adapted to its work. Up to a point, it respond
ed directly to each new duty that was laid upon
it. But only up to a point. There came a time
when the necessities became too numerous and too
varied for adaptation to keep pace with them. And
the fatal day came, the fatal day for the Hand, when
he who bore it made a new discovery. It was the
discovery of Tools. Henceforth what the Hand used
to do, and was slowly becoming adapted to do better,
was to be done by external appliances. So that if
anything new arose to be done, or to be better done,
it was not a better Hand that was now made but a
better tool. Tools are external Hands. Levers are
the extensions of the bones of the arm. Hammers are
callous substitutes for the fist. Knives do the work
of nails. The vice and the pincers replace the fin
gers. The day that Cave-man first split the marrow
bone of a bear by thrusting a stick into it, and strik
ing it home with a stone — that day the doom of the
Hand was sealed.

THE ARREST OF THE BODY. 103

But has not Man to make his tools, and will not
that induce the development of the Hand to an as yet
unknown perfection? No. Because tools are not
made with the Hand. They are made with the Brain.
For a time, certainly. Man had to make his tools, and
for a time this work recompensed him physically, and
the arm became elastic and the fingers dexterous and
strong. But soon lie made tools to make these tools.
In place of shaping things with the Hand, he invented
the turning-lathe ; to save his fingers he requisitioned
the loom ; instead of working his muscles he gave out
the contract to electricity and steam. Man, therefore,
from this time forward will cease to develop materi
ally these organs of his body. If he develops them
outside his body, filling the world everywhere with
artificial Hands, supplying the workshops with fingers
more intricate and deft than Organic Evolution could
make in a millennium, and loosing energies upon them
infinitely more gigantic than his muscles could gener
ate in a lifetime, it is enough. Evolution after all is a
slow process. Its great labor is to work up to a point
where Invention shall be possible, and where, by the
powers of the human mind, and by the mechanical
utilization of the energies of the universe, the results
of ages of development may be anticipated. Further
changes, therefore, within the body itself are made
unnecessary. Evolution has taken a new departure.
For the Arrest o.f the Hand is not the cessation of
Evolution but its immense acceleration, and the re
direction of its energies into higher channels.

Take up the functions of the animal body one by
one, and it will be seen how the same arresting finger
is laid upon them all. To select an additional illus-

104 THE ARREST OF THE JJODI".

tration, consider the power of Sight. Without paus
ing to trace the steps by which the Eye has reached
its marvellous perfection, or to estimate the ages spent
in polishing its lenses and adjusting the diaphragms
and screws, ask the simple question whether, under
the conditions of modern civilization, anything now is
being added to its quickening efficiency, or range. Is
it not rather the testimony of experience that if any
thing its power has begun to wane? Europe even
now affords the spectacle of at least one nation so
short-sighted that it might almost be called a myopic
race. The same causes, in fact, that led to the Arrest
of the Hand are steadily working to stop the develop
ment of the Eye. Man, when he sees with difficulty,
does not now improve his Eye; he puts on a pince-nez.
Spectacles— external eyes — have superseded the work
of Evolution. When his sight is perfect up to a point,
and he desires to examine objects so minute as to lie
beyond the limit of that point, he will not wait for
Evolution to catch up upon his demand and supply
him, or his children's children, with a more perfect
instrument. lie will invest in a microscope. Or
when he wishes to extend his gaze to the moon and
stars, he does not hope to reach to-morrow the dis
tances which to-day transcend him. He invents the
telescope. Organic Evolution has not even a chance.
In every direction the external eye has replaced the
internal, and it is even difficult to suggest where any
further development of this part of the animal can
now come in. There are still, and in spite of all
instruments, regions in which the unaided organs of
Man may continue to find a field for the fullest exer
cise, but j;he area is slowly narrowing, and in every

THE An REST OF THE JiODY. 105

direction the appliances of Science tempt the body to
accept those supplements of the Arts, which, being
accepted, involve the discontinuance of development
for all the parts concerned. Even where a mechanical
appliance, while adding range to a bodily sense, has
seemed to open a door for further improvement, some
con-elated discovery in a distant field of science, as by
some remorseless fate, has suddenly taken away the
opportunity and offered to the body only an additional
inducement for neglect. Thus it might be thought
that the continuous use of the telescope, in the at
tempt to discover more and more indistinct and dis
tant heavenly bodies, might tend to increase the effi
ciency of the Eye. But that expectation has vanished
already before a further fruit of Man's inventive
power. By an automatic photographic apparatus
fixed to the telescope, an Eye is now created vastly
more delicate and in many respects more efficient than
the keenest eye of Man. In at least five important
particulars the Photographic Eye is the superior of
the Eye of Organic Evolution. It can see where the
human Eye, even with the best aids of optical instru
ments, sees nothing at all ; it can distinguish certain
objects with far greater clearness and definition ;
owing to the rapidity of its action it can instantly de
tect changes which are too sudden for the human eye
to follow ; it can look steadily for hours without grow
ing tired; and it can record what it sees with infal
lible accuracy upon a plate which time will not efface.
How long would it take Organic Evolution to arrive
at an Eye of such amazing quality and power ? And
with such a piece of mechanism available, who, rather
than employ it even to the neglect of his organs of

106 THE AH REST OF THE BODY.

vision, would be content to await the possible attain
ment of an equal perfection by his descendants some
million years hence ? Is there not here a conspicuous
testimony to the improbability of a further Evolution
of the sense of Sight in civilized communities — in
other words, another proof of the Arrest of the
Animal? What defiance of Evolution, indeed, what
affront to Nature, is this ? Man prepares a compli
cated telescope to supplement the Eye created by Evo
lution, and no sooner is it perfected than it occurs to
him to create another instrument to aid the Eye in
what little work is left for it to do. That is to say,
he first makes a mechanical supplement to his Eye,
then constructs a mechanical Eye, which is better
than his own, to see through it, and ends by discard
ing, for many purposes, the Eye of Organic Evolution
altogether.

As regards the other functions of civilized Man,
the animal in almost every direction has reached
its maximum. Civilization — and the civilized state, be
it remembered, is the ultimate goal of every race and
nation — is always attended by deterioration of some
of the senses. Every man pays a definite price or
forfeit for his taming. The sense of smell, compared
with its development among the lower animals, is in
civilized Man already all but gone. Compared even
with a savage, it is an ascertained fact that the civil
ized Man in this respect is vastly inferior. So far as
hearing is concerned, the main stimulus — fear of sur
prise by enemies — has ceased to operate, and the
muscles for the erection of the ears have fallen into
disuse. The ear itself in contrast with that of the
savage is slow and dull, while compared with the

THE ARREST OF THE BODY. 111?

quick sense of the lower animals, the organ is almost
deaf. The skin, from the continuous use of clothes,
has forfeited its protective power. Owing to the use
of viands cooked, the muscles of the jaw are rapidly
losing strength. The teeth, partly for a similar
reason, are undergoing marked degeneration. The
third molar, for instance, among some nations is
already showing symptoms of suppression, and that
this threatens ultimate extinction may be reasoned
from the fact that the anthropoid apes have fewer
teeth than the lower monkeys, and these fewer than
the preceding generation of insectivorous mammals.

In an age of vehicles and locomotives the lower
limbs find their occupation almost gone. For mere
muscle, that on which his whole life once depended,
Man has almost now no use. Agility, nimbleness,
strength, once a stern necessity, are either a luxury
or a pastime. Their outlet is the cricket-field or the
tennis-court. To keep them up at all artificial means
—dumb-bells, parallel-bars, clubs— have actually to be
devised. Vigor of limb is not to be found in com
mon life, we look for it in the Gymnasium ; agility
is relegated to the Hippodrome. Once all men were
athletes ; now you have to pay to see them. More or
less with all the animal powers it is the same. To
some extent at least some phonograph may yet speak
for us, some telephone hear for us, the typewriter
write for us, chemistry digest for us, and incubation
nurture us. So everywhere the Man as Animal is in
danger of losing ground. He has expanded until the
world is his body. The former body, the hundred
and fifty pounds or so of organized tissue he carries
about with him, is little more than a mark of identity.

108 THE ARREST OF THE J3ODY.

It is not he who is there, he cannot be there, or any
where, for he is everywhere. The material part of
him is reduced to a symbol ; it is but a link with the
wider framework of the Arts, a belt between ma
chinery and machinery. His body no longer gener
ates, but only utilizes energy; alone he is but a tool,
a medium, a turncock of the physical forces.

Now with what feelings do we regard all this ? Is
not the crowning proof of the thesis under review that
we watch this evidence accumulating against the body
with no emotion and hear the doom of our clay
pronounced without a regret ? It is nothing to aspir
ing Man to watch the lower animals still perfecting
their mechanism and putting all his physical powers
and senses to the shame. It is nothing to him to be
distanced in nimbleness by the deer : has he not his
bullet? Or in strength by the horse: has he not bit
and bridle? Or in vision by the eagle : his field-glass
out-sees it. How easily we talk of the body as a
thing without us, as an impersonal it. And how nat
urally when all is over, do we advertise its irrelevancy
to ourselves by consigning its borrowed atoms to the
anonymous dust. The fact is, in one aspect, the body,
to Intelligence, is all but an absurdity. One is almost
ashamed to have one. The idea of having to feed it,
and exercise it, and humor it, and put it away in the
dark to sleep, to carry it about with one everywhere,
and not only it but its wardrobe — other material
things to make this material thing warm or keep it
cool — the whole situation is a comedy. But judge
what it would be if this exacting organism went on
evolving, multiplied its members, added to its in
tricacy, waxed instead of waned ? So complicated is

THE ARREST OF THE BODY. 109

it already that one shrinks from contemplating a
future race having to keep in repair an apparatus
more involved and delicate. The practical advantage
is enormous of having all improvements henceforth
external, of having insensate organs made of iron and
steel rather than of wasting muscle and palpitating
nerve. For these can be kept at no physiological cost,
they cannot impede the other machinery, and when
that finally comes to the last break-down there will be
the fewer wheels to stop.

So great indeed is the advantage of increasing me
chanical supplements to the physical frame rather
than exercising the physical frame itself, that this will
become nothing short of a temptation; and not the
least anxious task of future civilization will be to pre
vent degeneration beyond a legitimate point, and keep
up the body to its highest working level. For the
first thing to be learned from these facts is not that
the Body is nothing and must now decay, but that it
is most of all and more than ever worthy to be pre
served. The moment our care of it slackens, the Body
asserts itself. It comes out from under arrest — which
is the one thing to be avoided. Its true place by the
ordained appointment of Nature is where it can be
ignored; if through disease, neglect or injury it re
turns to consciousness, the effect of Evolution is un
done. Sickness is degeneration ; pain the signal to
resume the evolution. On the one hand, one must
" reckon the Body dead" ; on the other, one must think
of it in order not to think of it.

This arrest of physical development at a specific
point is not confined to Man. Everywhere in the
organic world science is confronted with arrested

110 THE ARREST OF THE BODY.

types. While endless groups of plant and animal
forms have advanced during the geological ages, other
whole groups have apparently stood still— stood still,
that is to say, not in time but in organization. If
Nature is full of moving things, it is also full of fix
tures. Thirty-one years ago Mr. Huxley devoted the
anniversary Address of the Geological Society to a
consideration of what he called " Persistent Types of
Life," and threw down to Evolutionists a puzzle which
has never yet been fully solved. While some forms
attained their climacteric tens of thousands of years
ago and perished, others persevered, and, without ad
vancing in any material respect, are alive to this day.
Among the most ancient Carboniferous plants, for in
stance, are found certain forms generically identical
with those now living. The cone of the existing Arau-
caria is ccarcely to be distinguished from that of an
Oolite form. The Tabulate Corals of the Silurian
period are similar to those which exist to-day. The
Lamp-shells of our present seas so abounded at the
same ancient date as to give their name to one of the
great groups of Silurian rocks— the Lingula Flags.
Star-fishes and Sea-urchins, almost the same as those
which tenant the coast-lines of our present seas,
crawled along what are now among the most ancient
fossiliferous rocks. Both of the forms just named,
the Brachiopods and the Echinoderms, have come
down to us almost unchanged through the nameless
gap of time which separates the Silurian and Old Red
Sandstone periods from the present era.

This constancy of structure reveals a conservatism
In Nature, as unexpected as it is wide-spread. Does it
mean that the architecture of living things has a limit

THE ATtllEST OF THE BODY. Ill

beyond which development cannot go ? Does it mean
that the morphological possibilities along certain lines
of bodily structure have exhausted themselves, that
the course of conceivable development in these in
stances has actually run out? In Gothic Architec
ture, or in Norman, there are terminal points which,
once reached, can be but little improved upon. With
out limiting working efficiency, they can go no further.
These styles in the very nature of things seem to have
limits. Mr. Ruskin has indeed assured us that there
are only three possible forms of good architecture in
the world; Greek, the architecture of the Lintel;
Romanesque, the architecture of the Rounded Arch ;
Gothic, the architecture of the Gable. "All the archi
tects in the world will never discover any other way
of bridging a space than these three, the Lintel, the
Round Arch, the Gable ; they may vary the curve of
the arch, or curve the sides of the gable, or break
them down ; but in doing this they are merely modi
fying or sub-dividing, not adding to the generic
form.'1 1

In some such way, there may be terminal generic
forms in the architecture of animals ; and the persist
ent types just named may represent in their several
directions the natural limits of possible modification.
No further modification of a radical kind, that is to
say, could in these instances be introduced with
out detriment to practical efficiency. These termi
nal forms thus mark a normal maturity, a goal;
they represent the ends of the twigs of the tree of
life.

Now consider the significance of that fact. Nature
1 Stones of Venice, 11. 23G.

112 THE ARREST OF THE BODY.

is not an interminable succession. It is not always a
becoming. Sometimes things arrive. The Lamp-
shells have arrived, they are part of the permanent
furniture of the world ; along that particular line,
there will probably never be anything higher. The
Star-fishes also have arrived, and the Sea-urchins, and
the Nautilus, and the Bony Fishes, the Tapirs, and
possibly the Horse — all these are highly divergent
forms which have run out the length of their tether
and can go no further. When the plan of the world
was made, to speak teleologically, these types of life
were assigned their place and limit, and there they
have remained. If it were wanted to convey the im
pression that Xature had some large end in view, that
she was not drifting aimlessly towards a general
higher level, it could not have been done more im
pressively than by everywhere placing on the field of
Science these fixed points, these innumerable consum
mations, these clean-cut mountain peaks, which for
millenniums have never grown. Even as there is a
plan in the parts, there is a plan in the whole.

But the most certain of all these " terminal points "
in the evolution of Creation is the body of Man.
Anatomy places Man at the head of all other animals
that were ever made ; but what is infinitely more in
structive, with him, as we have just seen, the series
conies to an end. Man is not only the highest branch,
but the highest possible branch. Take as a last wit
ness the testimony of anatomy itself with regard to
the human brain. Here the fact is not only re
affirmed but the rationale of it suggested in terms of
scientific law. " The development of the brain is in
connection with a whole system of development of the

THE ARREST OF THE BODY, 113

head and face which cannot be carried further than
in Man. For the mode in which the cranial cavity is
gradually increased in size is a regular one, which
may be explained thus : we may look on the skull as
an irregular cylinder, and at the same time that it is
expanded by increase of height and width it also
undergoes a curvature or bending on itself, so that the
base is crumpled together while the roof is elongated.
This curving has gone on in Man till the fore end of
the cylinder, the part on which the brain rests above
the nose, is nearly parallel to the aperture of com
munication of the skull with the spinal canal, i. e., the
cranium has a curve of 1 80° or a few degrees more or
less. This curving of the base of the skull involves
change in position of the face bones also, and could
not go on to a further extent without cutting off the
nasal cavity from the throat . . . Thus there is
anatomical evidence that the development of the ver
tebrate form has reached its limit by completion in
Man." l

This author's conception of the whole field of living
nature is so suggestive that we may continue the quo
tation : " To me the animal kingdom appears not in
indefinite growth like a tree, but a temple with many
minarets, none of them capable of being prolonged —
while the central dome is completed by the structure
of man. The development of the animal kingdom is
the development of intelligence chained to matter ;
the animals in which the nervous system has reached
the greatest perfection are the vertebrates, and in Man
that part of the nervous system which is the organ of

1 Prof. J. Cleland, M.D., F.R.S., Joxrnnl nf Anntomi/, Vol

XVIII., pp. 00:3-1.

8

114 THE ARREST OF THE BODY.

intelligence reaches, as I have sought to show, the
highest development possible to a vertebrate animal,
while intelligence has grown to reflection and volition.
On these grounds, I believe, not that Man is the
highest possible intelligence, but that the human body
is the highest form of human life possible, subject to
the conditions of matter on the surface of the globe,
and that the structure completes the design of the ani
mal kingdom." 1

Never was the body of Man greater than with this
sentence of suspension passed on it, and never was
Evolution more wonderful or more beneficent than
when the signal was given to stop working at Man's
animal frame. This was an era in the world's history.
For it betokened nothing less than that the cycle of
matter was no\v complete, and the one prefatory task
of the ages finished. Henceforth the Weltanschauung
is forever changed. From this pinnacle of matter is
seen at last what matter is for, and all the lower lives
that ever lived appear as but the scaffolding for this
final work. The whole sub-human universe finds its
reason for existence in its last creation, its final justifi
cation in the new immaterial order which opened with
its close. Cut off Man from Nature, and, metaphys
ical necessity apart, there remains in Nature no
divinity. To include Man in Evolution is not to lower
Man to the level of Nature, but to raise Nature to his
high estate. There he was made, these atoms are his
confederates, these plant cells raised him from the
dust, these travailing animals furthered his Ascent :
shall he excommunicate them now that their work is
done? Plant and animal have each their end, but
1 Journal of Anatomy, Vol. xvni., p. -362.

THE ARREST OF THE BODY. 115

Man is the end of till the ends. The latest science re
instates him, where poet and philosopher had already
placed him, as at once the crown, the master, and the
rationale of creation. "Not merely," says Kant, "is
he like all organized beings an end in nature, but also
here on earth the last end of nature, in reference to
whom all other natural things constitute a system of
ends." Yet it is not because he is the end of ends,
but the beginning of beginnings, that the completion
of the Body marks a crisis in the past, At last Evolu
tion had culminated in a creation so complex and ex
alted as to form the foundation for an inconceivably
loftier super-organic order. The moment an organism
was reached through which Thought was possible,
nothing more was required of matter. The Body was
high enough. Organic Evolution might now even
resign its sovereignty of the world ; it had made a
thing which was now its master. Henceforth Man
should take charge of Evolution even as up till now
he had been the one charge of it. Henceforth his
selection should replace Natural Selection ; his judg
ment guide the struggle for life ; his will determine
for every plant upon the earth, whether it should
bloom or fade, for every animal whether it should in
crease, or change, or die. So Man entered into his
Kingdom.

Science is charged, be it once more recalled, with
numbering Man among the beasts, and levelling his
body with the dust. But he who reads for himself
the history of creation as it is written by the hand
of Evolution will be overwhelmed by the glory and
honor heaped upon this creature. To be a Man, and
to have no conceivable successor ; to be the fruit and

116 THE ARREST OF THE BODY.

crown of the long past eternity, and the highest pos
sible fruit and crown ; to be the last victor among the
decimated phalanxes of earlier existences, and to be
nevermore defeated ; to be the best that Nature in her
strength and opulence can produce ; to be the first of
that new order of beings who by their dominion over
the lower world and their equipment for a higher,
reveal that they are made in the Image of God — to be
this is to be elevated to a rank in Nature more exalted
than any philosophy or any poetry or any theology
have ever given to Man. Man was always told that
his place was high ; the reason for it he never knew
till now ; he never knew that his title deeds were the
very laws of Nature, that he alone was the Alpha and
Omega of Creation, the beginning and the end of
Matter, the final goal of Life.

Nature is full of new departures ; but never since
time began was there anything approaching in impor
tance that period when the slumbering animal, Brain,
broke into intelligence, and the Creature first felt that
it had a Mind. From that dateless moment a higher
and swifter progress of the world began. Henceforth,
Intelligence triumphed over structural adaptation.
The wise were naturally selected before the strong.
The Mind discovered better methods, safer measures,
shorter cuts. So the body learned to refer to it, then
to defer to it. As the Mind was given more to do, it
enlarged and did its work more perfectly. Gradually
the favors of Evolution — exercise, alteration, dif
ferentiation, addition — which were formerly distrib
uted promiscuously among the bodily organs — were
now lavished mainly upon the Brain. The gains
accumulated with accelerating velocity ; and by sheer

THE ARREST OF THE BODY. 117

superiority and fitness for its work, the Intellect rose
to commanding power, and entered into final posses
sion of a monopoly which can never be disturbed.

Now this means not only that an order of higher
animals has appeared upon the earth, but that an
altogether new page in the history of the universe has
begun to be written. It means nothing less than that
the working of Evolution has changed its course.
Once it was a physical universe, now it is a psychical
universe. And to say that the working of Evolution
has changed its course, and set its compass in psy
chical directions, is to call attention to the most
remarkable fact in Nature. Nothing so original or so
revolutionary has ever been given to science to dis
cover, to ponder, or to proclaim. The power of this
event to strike and rouse the mind will depend upon
one's sense of what the working of Evolution hac
been to the world ; but those who realize this even
dimly will see that no emphasis of language can exag
gerate its significance. Let imagination do its best to
summon up the past of Nature. Beginning with the
panorama of the Nebular Hypothesis, run the eye over
the field of Palaeontology, Geology, Botany, and
Zoology. Watch the majestic drama of Creation
unfolding, scene by scene and act by act. Realize
that one power, and only one, has marshalled the
figures for this mighty spectacle ; that one hand, and
only one, has carried out these transformations ; that
one principle, and only one, has controlled each sub
sidiary plot and circumstance ; that the same great
patient unobtrusive law has guided and shaped the
whole from its beginnings in bewilderment and chaos
to its end in order, harmony, and beauty. Then watch

118 THE AUlt E XT OF THE BODY.

the curtain drop. And as it moves to rise again,
behold the new actor upon the stage. Silently, as all
great changes come, Mental Evolution has succeeded
Organic. All the things that have been now lie in the
far background as forgotten properties. And Man
stands alone in the foreground, and a new thing,
Spirit, strives within him.

CHAPTER IV.

THE DAWN OF MIND.

THE most beautiful witness to the Evolution of Man
is the Mind of a little child. The stealing in of that
inexplicable light— yet not more light than sound
or touch — called consciousness, the first nicker of
memory, the gradual governance of will, the silent
ascendancy of reason— these are studies in Evolution
the oldest, the sweetest, and the most full of meaning
for mankind. Evolution, after all, is a study for the
nursery. It was ages before Darwin or Lamarck or
Lucretius that Maternity, bending over the hollowed
cradle in the forest for a first smile of recognition from
her babe, expressed the earliest trust in the doctrine
of development. Every mother since then is an un
conscious Evolutionist, and every little child a living
witness to Ascent.

Is the Mind a new or an old thing in the world ? Is
it an Evolution from beneath or an original gift from
heaven? Did the Mind, in short, come down the ages
like the Body, and does the mother's faith in the in
tellectual unfolding of her babe include a remoter
origin for all human faculty ? Let the mother look at
her3 child and answer. " It is the very breath of God,"

119

120 THE DA iVN OF MIND.

she says ; " this Child-Life is Divine." And she is
right. But let her look again. That forehead, whose
is it ? It is hers. And the frown which darkened it
just now? Is hers also. And that which caused the
frown to darken, that something or nothing, behind
the forehead, that flash of pride, or scorn, or hate?
Alas, it is her very own. And as the years roll on,
and the budding life unfolds, there is scarcely a mood
or gesture or emotion that she does not know is bor
rowed. But whence in turn did she receive them?
From an earlier mother. And she ? From a still
earlier mother. And she ? From the savage- mother
in the woods. And the savage-mother ?

Shall we hesitate here ? We well may. So God
like a gift is intellect, so wondrous a thing is con
sciousness, that to link them with the animal world
seems to trifle with the profoundcst distinctions in the
universe. Yet to associate these supersensuous things
with the animal kingdom is not to identify them with
the animal-body. Electricity is linked with metal
rods, it is not therefore metallic. Life is associated with
protoplasm, it is not therefore albuminous. Instinct is
linked with matter, but it is not therefore material ;
Intellect with animal matter, but is not therefore
animal. As we rise in the scale of Nature we en
counter new orders of phenomena, Matter, Life, Mind,
each higher than that before it, each totally and for
ever different, yet each using that beneath it as the
pedestal for its further progress. Associated with
animal-matter — how associated no psychology, no
physiology, no materialism, no spiritualism, has even
yet begun to hint— may there not have been from an
early dawn the elements of a future Mind ? Do the

THE DA irN OF MIND. 121

wide analogies of Nature not make the suggestion
worthy at least of inquiry ? The fact, to which there
is no exception, that all lesser things evolve, the
suggestion, which is daily growing into a further cer
tainty, that there is a mental evolution among animals
from the Coelenterate to the Ape ; the fact that the
unfolding of the Child-Mind is itself a palpable evolu
tion ; the infinitely more significant circumstance that
the Mind in a child seems to unfold in the order in
which it would unfold if its mental faculties were
received from the Animal world, and in the order in
which they have already asserted themselves in the
history of the race. These seem formidable facts on
the side of those consistent evolutionists who, in the
face of countless difficulties and countless prejudices,
still press the lawful inquiry into the development
of human faculty.

The first feeling in most minds when the idea of
mental evolution is presented, is usually one of amuse
ment. This not seldom changes, when the question is
seen to be taken seriously, into wonder at the daring
of the suggestion or pity for its folly. All great prob
lems have been treated in this way. All have passed
through the inevitable phases of laughter, contempt,
opposition. It ought to be so. And if this problem is
" perhaps the most interesting that has ever been sub
mitted to the contemplation of our race," 1 its basis
cannot be criticised with too great care. But none
have a right to question either the sanity or the
sanctity of such investigations, still less to dismiss
them idly on a priori grounds, till they have ap
proached the practical problem for themselves, and
1 Komanes, Mental Evolution in Man, p. 2.

122 THE DAWN OF VTND.

heard at least the first few relevant words from
Nature. For one has only to move for a little among
the facts to see what a world of interest lies here, arid
to be forced to hold the judgment in suspense till
the sciences at work upon the problem have further
shaped their verdict. Thinkers who are entitled to
respect have even gone further. They include mental
evolution not only among the hypotheses of Science
but among its facts and its necessary facts. " Is it
conceivable," asks Mr. Romanes, " that the human
mind can have arisen by way of a natural genesis from
the minds of the higher quadrumaria ? I maintain
that the material now before us is sufficient to
show, not only that this is conceivable, but inevi
table." l

It is no part of the present purpose to discuss the
ultimate origin or nature of Mind. Our subject is its
development. At the present moment the ultimate
origin of Mind is as inscrutable a mystery as the
origin of Life. It is sometimes charged against
Evolution that it tries to explain everything and to
rob the world of all its problems. There does not
appear the shadow of a hope that it is about to rob
it of this. On the contrary the foremost scientific
exponents of the theory of mental evolution are cease
lessly calling attention to the inscrutable character of
the element whose history they attempt to trace.
" On the side of its philosophy," says Mr. Romanes,
" no one can have a deeper respect for the problem
of self -consciousness than I have ; for no one can be
more profoundly convinced than I am that the prob
lem on this side does riot admit of solution. In other
1 Op. tit., p. 213.

THE DA WN OF J/7.VD. 123

words, so far as this aspect of the matter is concerned,
I am in complete agreement with the most advanced
idealist. I am as far as any one can be from throwing
light upon the intrinsic nature of the probable origin
of that which I am endeavoring to trace/7 1 Mr. Darwin
himself recoiled from a problem so transcendent: "I
have nothing to do with the origin of the mental
powers, any more than I have with that of life itself." 2
" In what manner," he elsewhere writes, " the mental
powers were first developed in the lowest organisms,
is as hopeless an inquiry as how life itself first
originated."3

Notwithstanding his appreciation of the difficulty
of the ultimate problem, Mr. Darwin addressed his
whole strength to the question of the Evolution of
Mind — the Evolution as distinguished from its origin
and nature; and in this he has recently had many
followers, as well as many opponents. Among the
latter stand the co-discoverer with him of Natural
Selection, Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, and Mr. St.
George Mivart. Mr. Wallace's opposition, from a
scientific point of view, is not so hostile, however, as
is generally supposed. While holding his own view
as to the origin of Mind, what he attacks in Mr.
Darwin's theory of mental evolution is, not the de
velopment itself, but only the supposition that it
could have been due to Natural Selection. Mr. Wal
lace's authority is frequently quoted to show that the
mathematical, the musical and the artistic faculties
could not have been«evolved, whereas all he has really
emphasized is that "they could not have been devel-

1 Mental Evolution in Man, pp. 194-5.

2 Origin of Species, p. 191. 3 Descent of Man, p. 66.

124 THE DAWN OF MIND.

oped under the law of Natural Selection." l In short,
the conclusion of Mr. Darwin which his colleague
found " not to be supported by adequate evidence, and
to be directly opposed to many well-ascertained facts,"
was not a general theorem, but a specific one. And
many will agree with Mr. Wallace in doubting " that
man's entire nature and all his faculties, whether
moral, intellectual, or spiritual, have been derived
from their rudiments in the lower animals, in the same
manner and by the action of the same general laws as
his physical structure has been derived." 2

The more this problem has been investigated, the
difficulties of the whole field increase, and the off-hand
acceptance of any specific evolution theory finds less
and less encouragement. No serious thinker, on
whichever side of the controversy, has succeeded in
lessening to his own mind the infinite distance be
tween the Mind of Man and everything else in Nature,
and even the most consistent evolutionists are as
unanimous as those who oppose them, in their asser
tion of the uniqueness of the higher intellectual
powers. The consensus of scientific opinion here is
extraordinary. " I know nothing," says Huxley, in
the name of biology, "and never hope to know
anything, of the steps by which the passage from
molecular movement to states of consciousness is
effected." 3 " The two things," emphasizes the physi
cist, "are on two utterly different platforms, the
physical facts go along by themselves, and the men
tal facts go along by themselves." 4 " It is all through

1 Darwinism, p. 469. 2 Ibid., p. 461.

3 Contemporary Review, 1871.

* Clifford, Fortnightly Review, 1874.

THE DA WN OF MIND. 125

and forever inconceivable," protests the German
physiologist, "that a number of atoms of Carbon,
Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen, and so on, shall be other
than indifferent as to how they are disposed and how
they move, how they were disposed and how they
moved, how they will be disposed and how they will
be moved. It is utterly inconceivable how conscious
ness shall arise from their joint action." l So im
pressed is even Mr. Lloyd Morgan, mental evolutionist
though he be, with the gap between the Minds of Man
and brute that his language is almost as strong : " I
for one do not for a moment question that the mental
processes of man and animals are alike products of
evolution. The power of cognizing relations, reflection
and introspection, appear to me to mark a new de
parture in evolution," 2 and " I am not prepared to say
that there is a difference in kind between the mind of
man and the mind of a dog. This would imply a dif
ference in origin or a difference in the essential nature
of its being. There is a great and marked difference
in kind between the material processes which we call
physiological and the mental processes we call psychi
cal. They belong to wholly different orders of being.
I see no reason for believing that mental processes in
man differ thus in kind from mental processes in ani
mals. But I do think that we have, in the introduc
tion of the analytic faculty, so definite and marked a
new departure that we should emphasize it by saying
that the faculty of perception, in its various specific
grades, differs generically from the faculty of concep-

1 Du Bois-Reymond, Ueber die Grcnzen <7e.s Naturerkennens,

p. 42.

- C. Lloyd Morgan, Nature, Sept. 1, 1892, p. 417.

126 THE DA WN OF MIND.

tion. And believing, as I do, that conception is be
yond the power of my favorite and clever dog, I am
forced to believe that his mind differs generically from
my own." 1

Should any one feel it necessary either to his view
of Man or of the Universe to hold that a great gulf lies
here, it is open to him to cling to his belief. The pres
ent thesis is simply that Man has ascended. After all,
little depends on whether the slope is abrupt or gentle,
whether Man reaches the top by a uniform flight or
has here and there by invisible hands to be carried
across a bridgeless space. In any event it is Nature's
staircase. To say that self-consciousness has arisen
from sensation, and sensation from the function of nu
trition, let us say, in the Mimosa pudica or Sensitive
Plant, may be right or wrong ; but the error can only
be serious when it is held that that accounts either for
self-consciousness or for the transition. Mimosa can
be defined in terms of Man; but Man cannot be de
fined in terms of Mimosa. The first is possible because
there is the least fraction in that which is least in Man
of that which is greatest in Mimosa ; the last is impos
sible because there is nothing in Mimosa of that which
is greatest in Man. What the two possess in common,
or seem to possess, may be a basis for comparison, for
what it is worth ; but to include in the comparison the
ninety-nine and nine-tenths per cent, of what is over
and above that common fraction is by no sort of rea
soning lawful. Man, in the last resort, has self-con
sciousness, Mimosa sensation ; and the difference is
qualitative as well as quantitative.

If, however, it is a fallacy to ignore the qualitative
1 C. Lloyd Morgan, Animal Life and Inlelliyence, p. 350.

THE DAWN OF MIND. 127

differences arising in the course of the transition, it
may be a mistake, on the other hand, to make nothing
of the transition. If in the name of Science the
advocate of the Law of Continuity demands that it be
rectified, he may well make the attempt. The partial
truth for the present perhaps amounts to this, that
earlier phases of life exhibit imperfect manifestations
of principles which in the higher structure and
widened environment of later forms are more fully
manifested and expressed, yet are neither contained in
the earlier phases nor explained by them. At the
same time, everything that enters into Man, every
sensation, emotion, volition, enters with a difference, a
difference due to the fact that he is a rational .and
self-conscious being, a difference therefore which no
emphasis of language can exaggerate. The music
varies with the ear ; varies with the soul behind the
ear ; relates itself with all the music that ear has ever
heard before ; with the mere fact that what that ear
hears, it hears as music ; that it hears at all ; that it
knows that it hears. Man differs from every other
product of the evolutionary process in being able to
see that it is a process, in sharing and rejoicing in its
unity, and in voluntarily working through the process
himself. If he is part of it he is also more than part
of it, since he is at once its spectator, its director, and
its critic. " Even on the hypothesis of a psychic life
in all matter we come to an alteration indeed, but not
an abolition, of the contrast between body and soul.
Of course on that hypothesis they are distinguished
by no qualitative difference in their natures, but still
less do they blend into one; the one individual ruling
soul always remains facing, in an attitude of complete

128 THE DA WN OF MIND.

isolation, the homogeneous but ministrant monads,
the joint multitude of which forms the living body." l

With these preliminary cautions, let us turn for a
little to the facts. The field here is so full of interest
in itself that apart from its forming a possible chapter
in the history of Man it is worth a casual survey.

The difficulty of establishing even the general
question of Ascent is of course obvious. After Mind
emerged from the animal state, for a long time, and in
the very nature of the case, no record of its progress
could come clown to us. The material Body has left
its graduated impress upon the rocks in a million
fossil forms ; the Spirit of Man, at the other extreme
of time, has traced its ascending curve on the tablets
of civilization, in the drama of history, and in the
monuments of social life ; but the Mind must have
risen into its first prominence during a long, silent
and dateless interval which preceded the era of monu
mental records. Mind cannot be exhumed by Palae
ontology or fully embalmed in unwritten history, and
apart from the analogies of Embryology we have
nothing but inference to guide us until the time came
when it was advanced enough to leave some tangible
register behind.

But so far as knowledge is possible there are mainly
five sources of information with regard to the past of
Mind. The first is the Mind of a little child; the
second the Mind of lower animals ; the third, those
material witnesses — flints, weapons, pottery — to prim
itive states of Mind which are preserved in an
thropological museums ; the fourth is the Mind of a
Savage ; and the fifth is Language.

1 Lotze, MicTOcoamus, p. 162.

THE DA WN OF MIND. 129

The first source — the Mind of a little child — has just
been referred to. Mind, in Man, does not start into
being fully ripe. It dawns ; it grows ; it mellows ; it
decays. This growing moreover is a gradual growing,
an infinitely gentle, never abrupt unfolding — the kind
of growing which in every other department of Nature
we are taught by Nature to associate with an Evolu
tion. If the Mind of the infant had been evolved, and
that not from primeval Man, but from some more
ancient animal, it could not to more perfection have
simulated the appearance of having so come.

But tliis is not all. The Mind of a child not only
grows, but grows in a certain order. And the aston
ishing fact about that order is that it is the probable
order of evolution of mental faculty as a whole. Where
Science gets that probable order will be referred to by
and by. Meantime, simply note the fact that not
only in the manner but in the order of its develop
ment, the human Mind simulates a product of Evolu
tion. The Mind of a child, in short, is to be treated as
an unfolding embryo; and just as the embryo of the
body recapitulates the long life-history of all the
bodies that led up to it, so this subtler embryo in
running its course through the swift years of early
infancy runs up the psychic scale through which, as
evidence from another field will show, Mind probably
evolved. We have seen also that in the case of the
body, each step of progress in the embryo has its
equivalent either in the bodies or in the embryos of
lower forms of life. Now each phase of mental devel
opment in the child is also permanentl}?" represented
by some species among the lower animals, by idiots,
or by the Mind of some existing savage.
9

130 THE DAWN OF MIND.

Let us turn, however, to the second source of infor
mation — Mind in the lower Animals.

That animals have "Minds" is a fact which prob
ably no one now disputes. Stories of " Animal Intelli
gence" and " Animal Sagacity " in dogs and bees and
ants and elephants and a hundred other creatures
have been told us from childhood with redundant re
iteration. The old protest that animals have no Mind
but only instinct has lost its point. In addition to
instincts, animals betray intelligence, and often a
high degree of intelligence ; they share our feelings
and emotions; they have memories; they form per
cepts ; they invent new ways of satisfying their
desires, they learn by experience. It is true their
Minds want much, and all that is highest ; but the
point is that they actually have Minds, whatever their
quantity and whatever their quality.1 If abstraction,
as Locke says, " is an excellency which the faculties of
brutes do by no means attain to," we cannot on that
account deny them Mind, but only that height of
Mind which men have, and which Evolution would
never look for in any living thing but Man. An

1 As to the exact point of the difference, Mr. Romanes draws
the line at the exclusive possession by Man of the power of intro
spective reflection in the light of self-consciousness. " Wherein,"
he asks, " does the distinction truly consist ? It consists in the
power which the human being displays of objectifying ideas, or of
setting one state of mind before another state, and contemplating
the relation between them. The power to think is — or, as I
should prefer to state it, the power to think at all — is the power
which is given by introspective reflection in the light of self-con
sciousness. . . . We have no evidence to show that any
animal is capable of thus objectifying its own ideas ; and, there
fore, we have no evidence that any animal is capable of judg-

THE DAWN OF MIND. 131

Evolutionist would no more expect to find the higher
rational characteristics in a wolf or a bear than to
unearth the modern turbine from a Roman aqueduct.

Though the possession even of a few rudiments
of Mind by animals is a sufficient starting point for
Mental Evolution, to say that they have only a few
rudiments is to understate the facts. But we know so
little what Mind is that speculation in this region can
only be done in the rough. On one hand lies the
danger of minimizing tremendous distinctions, on the
other, of pretending to know all about these distinc
tions, because we have learned to call them by certain
names. Mind, when we come to see what it is, may
be one; perhaps must be one. The habit of uncon
sciously regarding the powers and faculties of Mind as
separate entities, like the organs of the body, has its
risks as well as its uses ; and we cannot too often
remind ourselves that this is a mere device to facili
tate thought and speech.

It is mainly to Mr. Romanes that we owe the work
ing out of the evidence in this connection ; and even
though his researches be little more than a prelimi
nary exploration, their general results are striking.
Realizing that the most scientific way to discover

ment. Indeed, I will go further and affirm that we have the best
evidence which is derivable from what are necessarily ejective
sources, to prove that no animal can possibly attain to these
excellencies of subjective life." Mr. Romanes proceeds to state
the reason why. It is because of " the absence in brutes of the
needful conditions to the occurrence of those excellencies as they
obtain in themselves . . . the great distinction between the
brute and the man really lies behind the faculties both of concep
tion and prediction ; it resides in the conditions to the occurrence
of either." — Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 175.

132 THE DAWN OF MIND.

whether there are any affinities between Mind in Ani
mals and Mind in Man is to compare the one with the
other, he began a laborious study of the Animal
world. His conclusions are contained in " Animal
Intelligence" and "Mental Evolution in Animals "-
volumes which no one can read without being con
vinced at least of the thoroughness and fairness of the
investigation. That abundant traces were found of
Mind in the lower animals goes without saying. But
the range of mental phenomena discovered there may
certainly excite surprise. Thus, to consider only one
set of phenomena — that of the emotions — all the fol
lowing products of emotional development are repre
sented at one stage or another of animal life :

FEAR

EMULATION

BENEVOLENCE

SURPRISE

PRIDE

REVENGE

AFFECTION

PRESENTMENT

RAGE

PUGNACITY

EMOTION OF THE

SHAME

CURIOSITY

BEAUTIFUL

REGRET

JEALOUSY

GRIEF

DECEITFULNESS

ANGER

HATE

EMOTION OF THE

PLAY

CRUELTY

LUDICROUS

SYMPATHY

But this list is something more than a bare cata
logue of what human emotions exist in the animal
world. It is an arranged catalogue, a more or less
definite psychological scale. These emotions did not
only appear in animals, but they appeared in this
order. Now to find out order in Evolution is of first
importance. For order of events is history, arid Evo
lution is history. In creatures very far down the

THE DAWN OF MIND. 133

scale of life — the Annelids — Mr. Romanes distin
guished what appeared to him to be one of the earliest
emotions— Fear. Somewhat higher up, among the
Insects, he met with the Social Feelings, as well as
Industry, Pugnacity, and Curiosity. Jealousy seems
to have been born into the world with Fishes ; Sym
pathy with Birds. The Carnivora are responsible for
Cruelty, Hate, and Grief ; the Anthropoid Apes for
Remorse, Shame, the Sense of the Ludicrous, and
Deceit.

Now, when we compare this table with a similar
table compiled from a careful study of the emotional
states in a little child, two striking facts appear. In
the first place, there are almost no emotions in the
child Avhich are not here — this list, in short, practi
cally exhausts the list of human emotions. With the
exception of the religious feelings, the moral sense,
and the perception of the sublime, there is nothing
found even in adult Man which is not represented
with more or less vividness in the Animal Kingdom.
But this is not all. These emotions, as already
hinted, appear in the Mind of the growing child in the
same order as they appear on the animal scale. At
three weeks, for instance, Fear is perceptibly manifest
in a little child. When it is seven weeks old the
Social Affections dawn. At twelve weeks emerges
Jealousy, with its companion Anger. Sympathy ap
pears after five months ; Pride, Resentment, Love of
Ornament, after eight ; Shame, Remorse, and Sense of
the Ludicrous after fifteen. These dates, of course,
do not indicate in any mechanical way the birthdays
of emotions ; they represent rather stages in an infi
nitely gentle mental ascent, stages nevertheless so

134 THE DA \VN OF MIND.

marked that we are able to give them names, and use
them as landmarks in psychogenesis. Yet taken even
as representing a rough order it is a circumstance to
which some significance must be attached that the
tree of Mind as we know it in lower Nature, and the
tree of Mind as we know it in a little child, should be
the same tree, starting its roots at the same place, and
though by no means ending its branches at the same
level, at least growing them so far in a parallel direc
tion.

Do we read these emotions into the lower animals
or are they really there ? That they are not there in
the sense in which we think them there is probably
certain. But that they are there in some sense, a
sense sufficient to permit us cautiously to reason
from, seems an admissible hypothesis. No doubt it
takes much for granted, — partly, indeed, the very
thing to be proved. But discounting even the enor
mous limitations of the inquiry, there is surely a
residuum of general result to make it at least worth
making.

If we turn from emotional to intellectual develop
ment, the parallelism though much more faint is at
least shadowed. Again we find a list of intellectual
products common to both Animal and Man, and, again
an approximate order common to both. It is true,
Man's development beyond the highest point attained
by any animal in the region of the intellect, is all but
infinite. Of rational judgment he has the whole mo
nopoly. Wherever the roots of Mind be, there is no
uncertainty as to where, and where exclusively, the
higher branches are. Grant that the mental faculties
of Man and Animal part company at a point, there

THE DA WN OF MIND. 135

remains to consider the vast distance— in the case of
the emotions almost the whole distance— where they
run parallel with one another. Comparative psy
chology is not so advanced a science as comparative
embryology ; yet no one who has felt the force of the
recapitulation argument for the evolution of bodily
function, even making all allowances for the differ
ences of the things compared, will deny the weight of
the corresponding argument for the evolution of Mind.
Why should the Mind thus recapitulate in its devel
opment the psychic life of animals unless some vital
link connected them ?

A singular complement to this argument has been
suggested recently— though as yet only in the form
of the vaguest hint— from the side of Mental Pathol
ogy. When the Mind is affected by certain diseases,
its progress downward can often be followed step by
step. It does not tumble down in a moment into
chaos like a house of cards, but in a definite order,
stone by stone, or story by story. Now the striking
thing about that order is, that it is the probable order
in which the building has gone up. The order of
descent, in short, is the inverse of the order of ascent.
The first faculty to go, in many cases of insanity, is
the last faculty which arrived; the next faculty is
affected next ; the whole spring uncoiling as it were
in the order and direction in which, presumably, it
had been wound up. Sometimes even in the phe
nomenon of old age the cycle may be clearly traced.
" Just as consciousness is slowly evolved out of vege
tative life, so is it, through the infirmities of old age,
the gradual approach of death, and in advanced men
tal disease, again resolved into it. The highest, most

136 THE DA WN OF MIND.

differentiated phenomena of consciousness are the first
to give way ; impulse, instinct, and reflex movements
become again predominant. The phrase ' to grow
childish ' expresses the resemblance between the first
stage and the stage of dissolution." l

That the highest part of man should totter first is
what, on the theory of mental evolution, one would
already have expected. The highest part is the latest
added part, and the latest added part is the least
secured part. As the last arrival, it is not yet at
home ; it has not had time to get lastingly embedded
in the brain ; the competition of older faculties is
against it; the hold of the will upon it is slight and
fitful ; its tenure as a tenant is precarious and often
threatened. Among the older and more permanent
residents, therefore, it has little chance. Hence if
anything goes wrong, as the last added, the most com
plex, the least automatic of all the functions, it is the
first to suffer.

We are but too familiar with cases where men of
lofty intellect and women of most pure mind, seized
in the awful grasp of madness, are transformed in
a few brief months into beings worse than brutes.
How are we to account, on any other principle than
this, for that most shocking of all catastrophes the
sudden and total break-up, the devolution, of a saint?
That the wise man should become a chattering idiot is
inexplicable enough, but that the saintly soul should
riot in blasphemy and immorality so foul that not
among the lowest races is there anything to liken to
it — these are phenomena so staggering that if Evolu
tion hold any key to them at all, its suggestion must
1 Hoffding, Pyschology, p. 92.

THE DA \VN OF MIND. 1 37

come as at least a partial relief to the human mind.
These are possibly cases of actual reversion, cases
where all the beautiful later buildings of humanity
had been swept away and only the elemental brute
foundations left. Devolution is thus assumed to be
a co-relative of Evolution. And as the morbid states
of the Mind are more and more studied in this rela
tion, it may yet be possible from the phenomena
of insanity to lay bare to some extent the outline
of intellectual ascent. In the present state both of
psychology, and especially of our knowledge of the
brain, nothing probably could be more precarious than
this as an argument. The very statement involves
modes of expression which exact science would rule
out of court. The best that can be said is that it
is a suggestion awaiting further light before it can
even rank as a theory. Complex as the source of
knowledge is, the Mind itself must ever be the final
authority on its own biography. Analogy from lower
nature may do much to confirm the reading ; the
mental history of the human race, from the rudi
ments of intellect in the savage to its development
in civilized life, may contribute some closing chap
ters; but unless the Mind tell its own story it will
never be fully told. Yet should it ever thus be
told, the mystery of Mind itself would remain the
same. For the most this could do would be to replace
one mystery by a greater. For what greater mystery
could there be than that within the mystery of the
Mind itself there should lie concealed the very key to
unlock its mystery ?

To pass from this fascinating region to the material
contributions of Anthropology is a somewhat abrupt

138 THE DA IV N OF MIND.

transition. But this third line of approach to a
knowledge of the earlier phases of Mind need not
detain us long.

So patient has been the search over almost the
whole world for relics of pre-historic Man, that vast
collections are now everywhere available where the
arts, industries, weapons, and, by inference, the men
tal development, of the earlier inhabitants of this
planet can be practically studied. On the two main
points at issue in the discussion of mental evolution
these collections are unanimous. They reveal in the
first instance, traces of Mind of a very low order exist
ing from an unknown antiquity ; and hi the second
place, they show a gradual improving of this Mind as
we approach the present day. It may be that in some
cases the evidence suggests a degenerating rather
than an ascending civilization ; but perturbations of
this sort do not affect the main question, nor neu
tralize the other facts. Evolution is constantly con
fronted with statements as to the former glory of now
decadent nations, as if that were an argument against
the theory. Granting that nations have degenerated,
it still remains to account for that from which they
degenerated. That Egypt has fallen from a great
height is certain ; but the real problem is how it got
to that height. When a boy's kite descends in our
garden, we do not assume that it came from the
clouds. That it went up before it came down is
obvious from all that we know of kite-making. And
that nations went up before they came down is ob
vious from all that we knoAv of nation-making. The
gravitation, moreover, which brings down nations is
just as real as the gravitation which brings down

THE DA WN OF MIXD. 139

kites ; and instead of a falling nation being a stum
bling block to Evolution, it is a necessity of the theory.
The degeneration and extinction of the unfit are as
infallibly brought about by natural laws as the sur
vival of the fit. Evolution is by no means synony
mous with uninterrupted progress, but at every turn
means relapse, extinction, and decay.

It is pretty clear that, applying the old Argument
from Design to the case of the most ancient human
relics, Man began the Ascent of Civilization at zero.
There has been a time in the history of every nation
when the only supplements to the organs of the body
for the uses of Man were the stones of the field and
the sticks of the forest. To use these natural, abun
dant, and portable objects, was an obvious resource
with early tribes. If Mind dawned in the past at all,
it is with such objects that we should expect its first
associations, and as a matter of fact it seems every
where to have been so. Uelics of a Stick Age would
of course be obliterated by time, but traces of a Stone
Age have been found, not in connection with the first
beginnings of a few tribes only, but with the first
beginnings— from the point that any representation
is possible — of probably every nation in the world.
The wide geographical use of stone implements is
one of the most striking facts in Anthropology.
Instead of being confined to a few peoples, and to
outlying districts, as is sometimes asserted, their dis
tribution is universal. They are found throughout
the length and breadth of Europe, and on all its
islands ; they occur everywhere in Western Asia, and
north of the Himalayas. In the Malay Peninsula they
strew the ground in endless numbers ; and again, ill

140 THE DA WN OF MIND.

Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia, the New
Hebrides, and the Coral Islands of the Pacific.
Known in China, they are scattered broad-cast
throughout Japan, and the same is true of America,
Mexico, and Peru. If a child playing with a toy
spade is a proof that it is a child, a nation working
with stone axes is proved to be a child-nation. Er
roneous conclusions may easily be drawn, and indeed
have been, from the fact of a nation using stone, but
the general law stands. Partly, perhaps, by mutual
intercourse, this use of stone became universal; but it
arose, more likely, from the similarity in primitive
needs, and the available means of gratifying them.
Living under widely different conditions, and in every
variety of climate, all early peoples shared the in
stincts of humanity which first called in the use of
tools and weapons. All felt the same hunger ; all had
the instinct of self-preservation ; and the universality
of these instincts and the commonness of stone led
the groping Mind to fasten upon it, and make it one
of the first steps to the Arts. A Stone Age, thus, was
the natural beginning. In the nature of things there
could have been no earlier. If Mind really grew by
infinitely gradual ascents, the exact situation the
theory requires is here provided in actual fact.

The next step from the Stone Age, so far as further
appeal to ancient implements can guide us, is also
exactly what one would expect. It is to a letter Stone
Age. Two distinct grades of stone implements are
found, the rough and the smooth, or the unground
and the ground. For a long period the idea never
seems to have dawned that a smooth stone made a
better axe than a rough one. Mind was as yet un-

THE DA \\'N OF MIND. 141.

equal to this small discovery, and there are vast
remains representing long intervals of time where all
the stone implements and tools are of the unground
type. Even when the hour did come, when savage
vied with savage in putting the finest polish on his
flints, his inspiration probably came from Nature.
The first lapidary was the sea ; the smoothed pebble
on the beach, or the rounded stone of the mountain
stream, supplied the pattern. There is no question
that the rough stone came earlier than the ground
stone. Thus the implements of the Drift Period,
those of the Danish Mounds, the Bone Caves, and the
gravels of St. AcLeul are mostly unground, while
those of the later Lake-Dwellers are almost wholly of
the smooth type.

To follow the Stone Age upward into the Bronze
Period, and from that to the Age of Iron is not neces
sary for the present purpose. For at this point the
order of succession passes from shell-mound and
crannog, into living hands. There are nations with
us still who have climbed so short a distance up the
psychic scale as to be still in the Age of Stone — •
peoples whose mental culture and habits are often
actual witnesses to the mental states of early Man.
These children of Nature take up the thread of mental
progress where the Troglodyte and Drift-Man left it;
and the modern traveller, starting from the civili
zation of Europe can follow Mind downwards step by
step, in ever descending order, tracing its shadings
backwards to a first simplicity till he finds himself
with the still living Lake-dweller of Nyasaland or
the Bushman of the African forest. Time was when
these humble tribes, with their strange and artless

142 THE DA WN OF MIND.

ways, were mere food for the curious. Now the
study of the lower native races has risen to the first
rank in comparative psychology ; jind the student of
beginnings, whether they be the beginnings of Art
or of Ethics, of Language or of Letters, of Law or of
Religion, goes to seek the roots of his science in the
ways, traditions, faiths, and institutions of savage
life.

This leads us, however, to the fourth of the sources
from which we were to gather a hint or two with
regard to the past of Mind — the savage. No one
should pronounce upon the Evolution of Mind till
he has seen a savage. By this is not meant the
show savage of an Australian town, or the quay
Kaffir of a South African port, or the Reservation
Indian of a Western State ; but the savage as he is
in reality, and as he may be seen to-day by any who
care to look upon so weird a spectacle. No study
from the life can compare with this in interest or in
pathos, nor stir so many strange emotions in the
mind of a thoughtful man. To sit with this incal
culable creature in the heart of the great forest; to
live with him in his natural home as the guest of
Nature, to watch his ways and moods and try to
resolve the ceaseless mystery of his thoughts — this,
whether the existing savage represents the primitive
savage or not, is to open one of the workshops of
Creation and behold the half-finished product from
which humanity has been evolved.

The world is getting old, but the traveller who
cares to follow the daybreak of Mind for himself can
almost do so still. Selecting a region where the
wand of western civilization has scarcely reached,

THE DA IV N OF MIND. 143

let him begin with a cruise in the Malay Archipelago
or in the Coral Seas of the Southern Pacific. He may
find himself there even yet on spots on which no
white foot has ever trod, on islands where unknown
races have worked out their destiny for untold cent
uries, whose teeming peoples have no name, and
whose habits and mode of life are only known to the
outer world through a ship's telescope. As he coasts
along, he will see the dusky figures steal like shades
among the trees, or hurry past in their bark canoes,
or crouch in fear upon the coral sand. He can watch
them gather the bread-fruit from the tree and pull
the cocoa-nut from the palm and root out the taro
for a meal which, all the year round and all the
centuries through, has never changed. In an hour
or two he can compass almost the whole round of
their simple life, and realize the gulf between himself
and them in at least one way— in the utter im
possibility of framing' to himself an image of the
mental world of men and women whose only world

is this.

Let him pass on to the coast of Northern Queens
land, and, landing where fear of the white man makes
landing possible, penetrate the Australian bush.
Though the settlements of the European have been
there for a generation, he will find the child of
Nature still untouched, and neither by intercourse
nor imitation removed by one degree from the lowest
savage state. These aboriginal peoples know neither
house nor home. They neither sow nor reap. Their
weapons are those of Nature, a pointed stick
and a knotted club. They live like wild things on
roots and berries and birds and wallabies, and

144 THE DA WN OF MIXD.

in the monotony of their life and the uncouthness of
their Mind represent almost the lowest level of hu
manity.1

From these rudiments of mankind let him make his
way to the New Hebrides, to Tana, and Santo, and
Ambry m, and Aurora. These islands, besides Man,
contain only three things, coral, lava, and trees. Un
til but yesterday their peoples had never seen any
thing but coral, lava, and trees. They did not know
that there was anything else in the world. One hun
dred years ago Captain Cook discovered these island
ers and gave them a few nails. They planted them in
the ground that they might grow into bigger nails.
It is true that in other lands a very rich life and a
very wide world could be made out of no more varied
materials than coral, lava and trees ; but on these
Tropical Islands Nature is disastrously kind. All
that her children need is provided for them ready-
made. Her sun shines on them so that they are never
either cold or hot ; she provides crops for them in un
exampled luxuriance, and arranges the year to be one
long harvest; she allows no wild animals to prowl
among the forest; and surrounding them with the
alienating sea she preserves them from the attacks of
human enemies. Outside the struggle for life, they
are out of life itself. Treated as children, they re
main children. To look at them now is to recall the

1 The situation is dramatic, that from end to end of the region
occupied by these tribes, there stretches the Telegraph connect
ing Australia with Europe. But what is at once dramatic and
pathetic is that the natives know it only in its material relations
— as so much wire, the first metal they have ever seen, to cut
Into lengths for spear-heads.

THE DAWN OF MIND. 145

long holiday of the childhood of the world. It is to
behold one's natural face in a glass.

Pass on through the other Cannibal Islands and,
apart from the improvement of weapons and the con
struction of a hut, throughout vast regions there is
still no sign of mental progress. But before one has
completed the circuit of the Pacific the change begins
to come. Gradually there appear the beginnings of
industry and even of art. In the Solomon Group and
in New Guinea, carving and painting may be seen in
an early infancy. The canoes are large and good, fish
hooks are manufactured and weaving of a rude kind
has been established. There can be no question at
this stage that the Mind of Man has begun its upward
path. And what now begins to impress one is not the
poverty of the early Mind, but the enormous poten
tialities that lie within it, and the exceeding swiftness
of its Ascent towards higher things. When the Sand
wich Islands are reached, the contrast appears in its
full significance. Here, a century ago, Captain Cook,
through whom the first knowledge of their existence
reached the outer world, was killed' and eaten. To
day the children of his murderers have taken their
place among the civilized nations of the world, and
their Kings and Queens demand acknowledgment at
modern Courts.

Books have been given to the world on the Mind of
animals. It is strange that so little should have been
written specifically on the Mind of the savage. But
though this living mine has not yet been drawn upon
for its last contribution to science, facts to suggest
and sustain a theory of mental evolution are every
where abundant. Waiving individual cases where
10

146 THE DA WN OF MIND.

nations have fallen from a higher intellectual level the
proof indicates a rising potentiality and widening of
range as we pass from primitive to civilized states. It
is open to debate whether during the historic period
mere intellectual advance has been considerable,
whether more penetrating or commanding intellects
have ever appeared than those of Job, Tsaiah, Plato,
Shakspeare. But that is matter of yesterday.
What concerns us now to note is that the Mind of
Man as a whole has had a slow and gradual dawn ;
that it has existed, and exists to-day, among certain
tribes at almost the lowest point of development with
which the word human can be associated ; and that
from that point an Ascent of Mind can be traced from
tribe to nation in an ever increasing complexity and
through infinitely delicate shades of improvement, till
the highest civilized states are reached. In the very
nature of things we should have expected such a re
sult. For this is not only a question of faculty. In
a far more intimate sense than we are apt to imagine,
it is a question of a gradually evolving environment.
Every infinitesimal enrichment of the soil for Mind to
grow in meant an infinitesimal enrichment of the
Mind itself. " It needs but to ask what would happen
to ourselves were the whole mass of existing knowl
edge obliterated, and were children with nothing be
yond their nursery-language -left to grow up without
guidance or instruction from adults, to perceive that
even now the higher intellectual faculties would be
almost inoperative, from lack of the materials and
aids accumulated by past civilization. And seeing
this, we cannot fail to see that development of the
higher intellectual faculties has gone on paii passu

THE DA WN OF MIND. 147

with social advance alike as cause and consequence ;
that the primitive man could not evolve these higher
intellectual faculties in the absence of a fit environ
ment ; and that in this, as in other respects, his prog
ress was retarded by the absence of capacities which
only progress could bring." l

The last testimony is that of Language. It has
already been pleaded in excuse for the absence of
actual proof for mental evolution that Mind leaves no
material footprints by which the palaeontologist can
trace its upward path. Yet this is not wholly true.
The flints and arrow-heads, the celts and hammers, of
early Man are fossil intelligence ; the remains of
primitive arts and industries are petrified Mind. But
there is one mould into which Mind has run more
large and beautiful than any of these. When its con
tents are examined they carry us back not only to
what men worked at with their hands, but to what
they said to one another as they worked and what
they thought as they spoke. That mould is Lan
guage. Language, says Jean Paul, is " ein Worter-
buch erblasster Metaphern " — a dictionary of faded
metaphors. But it is much more. A word is a
counter of the brain, a tangible expression of a mental
state, an heirloom of the wealth of culture of a race.
And an old word, like an ancient coin, speaks to us of
a former currency of thought, and by its image and
superscription reveals the mental life and aspiration of
those who minted it. " Language is the amber in
which a thousand precious and subtle thoughts have
been safely embalmed and preserved. It is the em
bodiment, the incarnation, of the feelings and thoughts

1 Herbert Spencer, Principles of Sociology, Vol. i., p. 90, 1.

148 THE DA WN OF MIND.

and experiences of a nation, yea often of many nations,
and of all which through long1 centuries they have
attained to and won. It stands like the Pillars of
Hercules, to mark how far the moral and intellectual
conquests of mankind have advanced, only not like
those pillars, fixed and immovable, but even itself
advancing with the progress of these. The mighty
moral instincts which have been working in the popu
lar mind have found therein their unconscious voice ;
and the single kinglier spirits that have looked deeper
into the heart of things have oftentimes gathered up
all they have seen into some one word, which they
have launched upon the world, and with which they
have enriched it forever — making in the new word a
new region of thought to be henceforward in some
sort the common heritage of all." 1

What then, when we open this marvellous struct
ure, is the revelation yielded us of the mental states
of those who lived at the dawn of speech ? An im
pression of poverty, great and pathetic. All fossils
teach the same lesson — the lesson of life, beauty,
structure, waning into a poverty-stricken past.
Whether they be the shells which living creatures
once inhabited, or the bones of departed vertebrate
types, or the forms of words where wisdom lay en
tombed, the structures became simpler and simpler
cruder and cruder, less full of the richness and
abundance of life as \ve near the birth of time. They
tell of days when the world was very young, when
plants were flowerless and animals back-boneless, of
later years when primeval Man prowled the forest and
chipped his flints and chattered in uncouth syllables
1 Trench, The Study of iror<7«, p. 28.

Til K DAWN OF 3/7JVD. 149

of battle and the chase. No words entered at that
time into human speech except those relating to the
activities, few and monotonous, of an almost animal
lot. These were the days of the protoplasm of speech.
There was no differentiation between verbs or ad
verbs, nouns or adjectives. The sentence as yet was
not ; each word was a sentence. There was no gram
matical inflection but the inflection of the voice; the
moods of the verb were uttered by intonation or
grimace. The pronouns " him " and " you " were
made by pointing at him and you. Man had even
no word for himself, for he had not yet discovered
himself. This fact, when duly considered, raises the
witness of Language to the Ascent of Mind to an
almost unique importance. Nothing more significant
could be said as to Man's mental past than that
there was a time when he was scarcely conscious
of himself, as a self. He knew himself, not as subject,
but like a little child, as one of the objects of the
external world. The words might have been written
historically of mankind, " When I was a child, I
spake as a child."

This evidence will meet us again in other forms
when we pass to consider the Evolution of Language
itself. Meantime let us close this chapter by point
ing out a relation of a much more significant order
between Language and the whole subject of Mental
Evolution. For the point is not only of special in
terest but it touches upon, and helps to solve, one of
the vital problems of the Ascent of Man.

The enormous distance travelled by the Mind of
Man beyond the utmost limit of intelligence reached
by any animal is a puzzling circumstance, a circum-

lf)0 THE DA \VN OF MIND.

stance only equalled in strangeness by another —
the suddenness with which that rise took place. Both
facts are without a parallel in nature. Why, of the
countless thousands of species of animals, each with
some shadowy rudiment of a Mind, all should have
remained comparatively at the same dead level,
while Man alone shot past and developed powers of
a quality and with a speed unknown in the world's
history, is a question which it is impossible not to
raise. That by far the greatest step in the world's
history should not only have been taken at the
eleventh hour, but that it took only an hour to do
it — for compared with the time when animals began
their first activities, the birth of Man is a thing of
yesterday — seems almost the denial of Evolution.
What was it in Man's case that gave his mental
powers their unprecedented start or facilitated a
growth so rapid and so vast?

The factors in all Evolution, and above all in this,
are too subtle to encourage one to speculate with
final assurance on so fine a problem. Nevertheless,
when it is asked, What brought about this sudden
rise of intelligence in the Case of Man, there is a
wonderful unanimity among men of science as to the
answer. It came about, it is supposed, in connection
with the acquisition by Man of the power to express
his mind, that is to speak. Evolution, up to this time,
had only one way of banking the gains it won — hered
ity. To hand on any improvement physically was
a slow and precarious work. But with the discovery
of language there arose a new method of passing on a
step in progress. Instead of sowing the gain on the
wind of heredity, it was fastened on the wings of

THE DAWN OF MIND. 151

words. The way to make money is not only to ac
cumulate small gains steadily, but to put them out at
a good rate of interest. Animals did the first with
their mental acquisitions : Man did the second. At a
comparatively early date, he found out a first-rate
and permanent investment for his money, so that he
could not only keep his savings and put them out at
the highest rate of interest, but have a share in all
the gain that was made by other men. That dis
covery was Language. Many animals had hit upon
an imperfect form of this discovery ; but Man alone
succeeded in improving it up to a really paying point.
The condition of all growth is exercise, and till he
could find a further field and a larger opportunity to
work what little brains he had, he had little chance
of getting more. Speech gave him this opportunity.
He rapidly ran up a fortune in brain-matter, because
he had found out new uses for it, new exercises of it,
and especially a permanent investment for husbanding
in the race each gain as it was made in the individual.
When he did anything he could now say it ; when he
learned anything he could pass it on; when he became
wise wisdom did not die with him, it was banked in
the Mind of humanity. So one man lent his mind to
another. The loans became larger and larger, the
interest greater and greater ; Man's fortune was
secured. In the mere Struggle for Life, his wits were
sharpened up to a point ; but unless he had learned to
talk, he could never have passed very far beyond the
animal.

Apart from the saving of time and the facility for
increased knowledge, the acquisition of speech meant
a saving of brain. A word is a counter for a thought.

lf> 2 THE DA ir.V OF MIND.

To use language is to make thinking easy. Hence
the release of brain energy for further developments
in new directions. In these and other ways speech
became the main factor in the intellectual develop
ment of mankind. Language formed the trellis on
which Mind climbed upward, Avhich continuously sus
tained the ripening fruits of knowledge for later
minds to pluck. Before the savage's son was ten
years old he knew all that his father knew. The
ways of the game, the habits of birds and fish, the
construction of traps and snares — all these would be
taught him. The physical world, the changes of
season, the location of hostile tribes, the strategies of
war, all the details and interests of savage life would
be explained. And before the boy was in his teens he
was equipped for the Struggle for Life as his fore
fathers had never been even in old age. The son, in
short, started to evolve where his father left off. Try
to realize what it would be for each of us to begin life
afresh, to be able to learn nothing by the experiences
of others, to live in a dumb and illiterate world, and
see what chance the animal had of making pro
nounced progress until the acquisition of speech. It
is not too much to say that speech, if mental evolution
is to come to anything or is to be worth anything, is a
necessary condition. By it alone, in any degree worth
naming, can the fruits of observation and experience
of one generation be husbanded to form a new start
ing-point for a second, nor without it could there be
any concerted action or social life. The greatness of
the human Mind, after all, is due to the tongue, the
material instrument of reason, and to Language the
outward expression of the inner life.

CHAPTER V.

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE.

IF Evolution is the method of Creation, the faculty
of Speech was no sudden gift. Man's mind is not to
be thought of as the cylinder of a phonograph to
which ready-made words were spoken and stored up
for future use. Before Homo sapiens was evolved he
must necessarily have been preceded for a longer or
shorter period by Homo alalus, the not-speaking man ;
and this man had to make his words, and beginning
with dumb signs and inarticulate cries to build up
a body of Language word by word as the body was
built up cell by cell.

The alternative theory of the origin of Language
universally held until lately, and expressed in so
many words even by the eighth edition of the
Encydopcedia Brltannica, that " our first parents
received it by immediate inspiration," has the same
relation to exact science as the view that the world
was made in six days by direct creative fiat. Both are
poetically true. But to science, seeking for precise
methods of operation, neither is an adequate statement
of now ascertained facts. The same processes of re
search that made the poetic view of creation unten
able in the physical realm are now slowly beginning

153

1 54 THE EVOL UTION OF LA NG UA GE.

to displace the older view of the origin of speech.
That Language should be outside a law whose univer
sality is being established with every step of progress,
is itself improbable; and now that the field is being
exhaustively explored the proofs that it is no excep
tion multiply on every side. The living interest the
mere suggestion gives to the study of Language is
obvious. Evolution enters no region — dull, neglected,
or remote — of the temple of knowledge without trans
forming it. Philology, since this wizard touched it,
has become one of the most entrancing of the sciences.
And Language, from a study which interested only
few specialists, is disclosed as one vast palimpsest,
every word and phrase luminous with the inner mind
and soul of the past. To penetrate far into this
tempting region is beyond our province now. The
immediate object is to give a simple sketch of the
possible conditions which first led Ulan to speak; of
the principles which apparently guided the formation
of his early vocabulary ; and of the gradual refining of
the means of intercommunication between him and his
fellow-men as time passed on. Instead of beginning
with words, therefore, we shall begin with Man. For
the first condition for understanding the Evolution of
Speech is that we take it up as a study from the life,
that we place ourselves in the primeval forest with
early Man, in touch with the actual scenes in which
he lived, and note the real experiences and necessities
of such a lot. We may indeed discover in this re
search small trace of a miraculous inbreathing of
formal words. But to make Speech and fit it into
a man, after all is said, is less miraculous than to fit a
man to make Speech.

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 155

One of the earliest devices hit upon in the course of
Evolution was the principle of co-operation. Long
before men had learned to form themselves into tribes
and clans for mutual strength and service, gregarious-
ness was an established institution. The deer had
formed themselves into herds, and the monkeys into
troops; the birds were in flocks, and the wolves in
packs; the bees in hives, and the ants in colonies.
And so abundant and dominant in every part of the
world are these social types to-day that we may be
sure the gregarious state has exceptional advantages
in the upward struggle.

One of these advantages, obviously, is the mere
physical strength of numbers. But there is another
and a much more important one — the mental strength
of a combination. Here is a herd of deer, scattered,
as they love to be, in a string, quarter of a mile long.
Every animal in the herd not only shares the physical
strength of all the rest, but their powers of observa
tion. Its foresight in presence of possible danger is
the foresight of the herd. It has as many eyes as the
herd, as many ears, as many organs of smell, its
nervous system extends throughout the whole space
covered by the line; its environment, in short, is not
only what it hears, sees, smells, touches, tastes, but
what every single member hears, sees, smells, touches,
tastes. This means an enormous advantage in the
Struggle for Life. What deer have to arm themselves
most against is surprise. When it comes to an actual
fight, comrades are of little use. At that crisis the
others run away and leave the victims to their fate.
But in helping one another to avert that crisis, the
value of this mutual aid is so great that gregarious

THE E VOL UTION OF LA NG UA CE.

animals, for the most part timid and defenceless as
individuals, have survived to occupy in untold multi
tudes the highest places in Nature.

The success of the co-operative principle, however,
depends upon one condition : the members of the herd
must be able to communicate with one another. It
matters not how acute the senses of each animal may
be, the strength of the column depends on the power
to transmit from one to another what impressions
each may receive at any moment from without.
Without this power the sociality of the herd is stulti
fied; the army, having no signalling department, is
powerless as an army. But if any member of the
herd is able by motion of head or foot or neck or ear,
by any sign or by any sound, to pass on the news that
there is danger near, each instantly enters into posses
sion of the faculties of the whole. Each has a hun
dred eyes, noses, ears. Each has quarter of a mile
of nerves. Thus numbers are strength only when
strength is coupled with some power of intercom
munication by signs. If one herd develops this sig
nalling system and another does not, its chances of
survival will be greater. The, less equipped herds will
be slowly decimated and driven to the wall; and
those which survive to propagate their kind will be
those whose signal-service is most efficient and com
plete. Hence the Evolution of the signal-system.
Under the influence of Natural Selection its progress
was inevitable. New circumstances and relations
would in time arise, calling for additions, vocal, visi
ble, audible, to the sign-vocabulary. And as time
went on each set of animals would acquire a definite
signal-service of its own, elementary to the last

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 157

degree, yet covering the range of its ordinary expe
riences and adequate to the expression of its limited
mental states.

Now what interests us with regard to these signs
is that they are Language. The evolution we have
been tracing is nothing less than the first stage in
the evolution of Speech. Any means by which infor
mation is conveyed from one mind to another is
Language. And •Language existed on the earth from
the day that animals began to live together. The
mere fact that animals cling to one another, live
together, move about together, proves that they com
municate. Among the ants, perhaps the most social
of the lower animals, this power is so perfect that
they are not merely endowed with a few general signs
but seem able to convey information upon matters of
detail. Sweeping across country in great armies they
keep up communication throughout the whole line,
and succeed in conveying to one another information
as to the easiest routes, the presence of enemies or
obstacles, the proximity of food supplies, and even of
the numbers required on emergencies to leave the
main band for any special service. Every one has
observed ants stop when they meet one another and
exchange a rapid greeting by means of their waving
antennse, and it is possibly through these perplexing
organs that definite intercourse between one creature
and another first entered the world. The exact
nature of the antenna-language is not yet fathomed,
but the perfection to which it is carried proves that
the idea of language generally has existed in
nature from the earliest time. Among higher animals
various outward expressions of emotions are made, and

158 THE EVOL UTION OF LA NG UA GE.

these become of service in time for the conveyance of
information to others. The howl of tne dog, the
neigh of the horse, the bleat of the lamb, the stamp
of the goat, and other signs are all readily understood
by other animals. One monkey utters at least six
different sounds to express its feelings ; and Mr.
Darwin has detected four or five modulations in the
bark of the dog: "the bark; of eagerness, as in the
chase • that of anger as well as growling ; the yelp or
howl of despair when shut up; the baying at night;
the bark of joy when starting on a walk with his
master ; and the very distinct one of demand or sup
plication, as when wishing for a door or window to be
opened/' 1

Now these signs are as much language as spoken
words. You have only to evolve this to get all the
language the dictionary-maker requires. Any method
of communication, as already said, is Language, and
to understand Language we must fix in our minds the
idea that it has no necessary connection with actual
words. In the simple instances just given there are
illustrations of at least three kinds of Language.
When a deer throws up its head suddenly, all the
other deer throw up their heads. That is a sign. It
means "listen.'"' If the hrst deer sees the object,
which has called its attention, to be suspicious, it
utters a low note. That is a word. It means " cau
tion." If next it sees the object to be not only sus
picious but dangerous, it makes a further use of
Language — intonation. Instead of the low note
"listen," it utters a sharp loud cry that means
"Run for your life." Hence these three kinds of
1 Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 84.

THE EVOL UriON OF LA NG UA GE. 159

Language — a sign or gesture, a note or word, an in-
tonaticn.

Down to this present hour these are still the
three great kinds of Language. The movement
of foot or ear has been evolved into the modern
gesture or grimace ; the note or cry into a word,
and the intonation into an emphasis or inflection
of the voice. These are still, indeed, not only the
main elements in Language but the only elements.
The eloquence which enthralls the legislators of St.
Stephen's, or the appeal which melts the worshippers at
St. Paul's, originated in the voices of the forest and the
activities of the ant-hill. To those who have not
realized the exceeding smallness of the beginnings of
all new developments, the suggestion of science as to
the origin of Language, like many of its other sugges
tions about early stages, will seem almost ludicrous.
But a knowledge of two things warns one not to look
for surprises at the beginning of Evolution but at the
end. In the first place, it is all but a cardinal principle
that developments are brought about by minute, slow
and insensible degrees. The second fact is even more
important. The theatre of change is the actual world,
and the exciting cause something really happening in
every-day life. Xe\v departures are not made in the
air. They arise in connection with some commonplace
event; and usually take the shape of some slightly
new response. In other connections, of course, the con
verse is also true, but when a change occurs for the
first time in the life of an organism the exciting cause,
whatever the internal adaptation, or want of it, is
some change in the environment. Among the events
then, actually happening in the day's round, we are

1 60 THE EVOL UTION OF LANG UA GE.

to seek for the exciting cause of the earliest forms of
speech.

The simplest Language open to Man was that which
we have already seen to mark the beginning of all
Language, the Language of gesture or sign. To the
word gesture, however, it is necessary to attach a
larger meaning than the term ordinarily expresses to
us. It is not to be limited, for example, to visible
movements of the limbs or facial muscles. The ejac
ulations of the savage, the drumming of the gorilla,
the screech of the parrot, the crying, growling, purring,
hissing, and spitting of other animals are all forms of
gesture. Nor is it possible to separate the Language
of gesture from the Language of intonation. These
have grown up side by side and can neither be dis
tinguished psychologically nor as to priority in the
order of Evolution. Intonation, though it has grown
to be infinitely the more delicate instrument of the two
and is still so important a part of some Languages —
the Chinese, for example — as to be an integral part of
them, has its roots in the same soil and must be looked
upon as, along with it, the earliest form of Language.

That this Gesture-Language marked, if not the dawn,
at least a very early sta.ge of Language in the case of
Man, there is abundant evidence. Apart from analogy,
there are at least three witnesses who may be cited in
proof not only of the fact, but of the high perfection to
which a Gesture-Language may be carried. The first
of these witnesses is the homo alalus, the not-speaking
man, of to-day, the deaf mute. As an actual case of a
human being reduced as regards the power of speech to
the level of early Man his evidence, even with ail allow
ances for the high development of his mental faculties,

THE E VOL UTION OF LANG UA GE. 161

is of scientific value. The mere fact that a deaf man
is also a dumb man is almost a final answer to the
affirmation that the power of speech is an original and
intuitive faculty of Man. If it were so, there is no
reason why a deaf man should not speak. The vocal
apparatus in his case is complete ; all that is required
to make him utter a definite sound is to hear one.
When he hears one, but not till then, he can imitate it.
Language, so far as the testimony of the deaf-mute
goes, is clearly a matter of imitation. Unable to attain
the second stage of Language — words — he has to con
tent himself with the first — signs. And this Language
he has evolved to its last perfection. It shows how
little the mere utterance of words has to do with Lan
guage, that the deaf-mute is able to converse on every
day subjects almost as perfectly as those who can
speak. The permutations and combinations that can
be produced with ten pliable fingers, or with the vary
ing expressions of the muscles of the face, are endless,
and everything that he cares to know can be uttered or
translated to him by motion, gesture, and grimace.
To give an idea how far gestures can be made to do the
work of spoken words, the signs may be described in
which a deaf-and-dumb man once told a child's story in
presence of Mr. Tylor. " He began by moving his
hand, palm down, about a yard from the ground, as we
do to show the height of a child — this meant that it
was a child he was thinking of. Then he tied an
imaginary pair of bonnet-strings under his chin (his
usual sign for female), to make it understood that the
child was a little girl. The child's mother was then
brought on the scene in a simitar way. She beckons to
the child and gives her twopence, these being indicated

162 THE E VOL UTION OF L A NG UA GE.

by pretending to drop two coins from one hand into the
other ; if there had been any doubt as to whether they
were copper or silver coins, this would have been settled
by pointing to something brown or even by one's con
temptuous way of handling coppers which at once dis
tinguishes them from silver. The mother also gives
the child a jar, shown by sketching its shape with the
forefingers in the air, and going through the act of
handing it over. Then by imitating the unmistakable
kind of twist with which one turns a treacle-spoon, it
is made known that it is treacle the child has to buy.
Next, a wave of the hand shows the child being sent
off on her errand, the usual sign of walking being
added, which is made by two fingers walking on the
table. The turning of an imaginary door-handle now
takes us into the shop, when the counter is shown by
passing the flat hands as it were over it. Behind this
counter a figure is pointed out ; he is shown to be a
man by the usual sign of putting one's hand to one's
chin and drawing it down where the beard is or would
be ; then the sign of tying an apron around one's waist
adds the information that the man is the shopman.
To him the child gives her jar, dropping the money into
his hand, and moving her forefinger as if taking up
treacle to show what she wants. Then we see the jar
put into an imaginary pair of scales which go up and
down ; the great treacle-jar is brought from the shelf
and the little one filled, with the proper twist to take
up the last trickling thread ; the grocer puts the two
coins in the till, and the little girl sets off with the jar.
The deaf-and-dumb story-teller went on to show in
pantomime how the child, looking down at the jar, saw
a drop of treacle on the rim, wiped it off with her

THE EVOL UTION OF LAN GU A GE. 1 03

finger, and put the finger in her mouth, how she was
tempted to take more, how her mother found her out
by the spot of treacle on her pinafore, and so forth." 1

A second witness is savage Man. Some of the
more primitive races, far as they have evolved past
the ulalus stage, still cling to the gesture-language
which bulked so largely in the intercourse of their
ancestors. No one who has witnessed a conversa
tion — one says " witnessed," for it is more seeing
than hearing — between two different tribes of Indians
can have any doubt of the working efficiency of this
method of speech. After ten minutes of almost pure
pantomime each will have told the other everything
that it is needful to say. Indians of different tribes,
indeed, are able to communicate most perfectly on all
ordinary subjects with no more use of the voice than
that required for the emission of a few different kinds
of grunts. The fact that stranger tribes make so
large a use of gesture in expressing themselves to
one another does not, of course, imply that each has
not a word-language of its own. But few of the Lan
guages of primitive peoples are complete without the
additions which gesture offers. There are gaps in the
vocabulary of almost all savage tribes due to the fact
that in actual speech the lacuna are bridged by signs,
and many of their words belong more to the category
of signs than to that of words.

The final witness is the first attempt at Language of
a little child. LTniversally an infant opens communi
cation with the mental world around it in the primi
tive language of gesture and tone. Long before it has
learned to speak, without the use of a single word it
1 Tylor, Anthropology.

164 THE E VOL UT1ON OF LANG UA GE.

conveys information as to fundamental wants, and
expresses all its varying moods and wishes with a
vehemence and point which are almost the envy of
riper years. The interesting thing about this is that
it is spontaneous. In later childhood it has to be
taught to speak — because speech is a fine art — but to
utter the hereditary and primitive Language of man
kind requires no prompting. Words are conven
tional, movements and sounds are natural. The Lan
guage of the nursery is the native Language of the
forest, the inarticulate cry of the animal, the into
nation of the savage. To quote from Mallery : — " The
wishes and emotions of very young children are con
veyed in a small number of sounds, but in a great
variety of gestures and facial expressions. A child's
gestures are intelligent long in advance of speech ; al
though very early and persistent attempts are made to
give it instruction in the latter but none in the for
mer, from the time when it begins risus cognoscere
matrem. It learns words only as they are taught,
and learns them through the medium of signs which
are not expressly taught. Long after familiarity with
speech it consults the gestures and facial expressions
of its parents and nurses, as if seeking them to trans
late or explain their words. These facts are im
portant in reference to the biologic law that the order
of development of the individual is the same as that
of the species. . . . The insane understand and
obey gestures when they have no knowledge whatever
of words. It is also found that semi-idiotic children
who cannot be taught more than the merest rudiment
of speech can receive a considerable amount of infor
mation through signs, and can express themselves

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 165

by them. Sufferers from aphasia continue to use
appropriate gestures. A stammerer, too, works his
arms and features as if determined to get his thoughts
out, in a manner not only suggestive of the physical
struggle, but of the use of gesture as a hereditary
expedient." l

The survival both of gesture and intonation in
modern adult speech, and especially the unconscious
ness of their use, illustrate how indelibly these
primitive forms of Language are embedded in the
human race. There are doubtless exceptions, but it is
probably the rule that gestures are mainly called in
to supplement expression when the subject-matter of
discourse does not belong to the highest ranges of
thought, or the speaker to the loftiest type of oratory.
The higher levels of thought were reached when the
purer forms of spoken Language had become the
vehicle of expression ; and, as has often been noticed,
when a speaker soars into a very lofty region, or
allows his mind to grapple intensely and absorbingly
with an exalted theme, he becomes more and more
motionless, and only resumes the gesture-language
when he descends to commoner levels. It is not only
that a fine speaker has a greater command of words
and is able to dispense with auxiliaries — as a master
of style can dispense with the use of italics — but that,
at all events, in the case of abstract thought, it is
untranslatable into gesture-speech. Gestures are sug
gestions and reminders of things seen and heard.
They are nearly all attached to objects or to moods,
and rival words only when used of every-day things.

1 First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washing
ton, 1881.

1G6 THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE.

"No sign talker," Mr. Romanes reminds us, "with
any amount of time at his disposal, could translate
into the language of gesture a page of Kant." 1

The next stage in the Evolution of Language must
have been reached as naturally as the Language of
gesture and tone. From the gesture-language to
mixtures of signs and sounds, and finally to the
specialization of sound into words, is a necessary
transition. Apart from the fact that gestures and
tones have limits, circumstances must often have
arisen in the life of early Man when gesture was im
possible. A sign Language is of no use when one
savage is at one end of a wood and his wife at the
other. He must now roar ; and to make his roar ex
plicit, he must have a vocabulary of roars, and of all
shades of roars. In the darkness of night also, his
signs are useless, and he must now whisper and have
a vocabulary of whispers. Nor is it difficult to con
ceive where he got his first brief list of words.
Instead of drawing things in the air with his finger,
he would now try to imitate their sounds. Every
thing around him that conveyed any impression of
sound would have associated with it some self-ex
pressive word, which all familiar with the original
sound could instantly recognize. Imagine, for in
stance, a herd of buffalo browsing in a glade of the
African forest. The vanguard, some little distance
from its neighbors, hears the low growl of a lion.
That growl, of course, is Language, and the buffalo
understands it as well as we do when the word "lion"
is pronounced. Between the word " lion " spoken,
and the object lion growled, there is no difference in
1 Mental Evolution, p. 147.

THE EVOL UTION OF LA XG UA GE. 107

the effect. Suppose, next, the buffalo wished to con-
vey to its comrades the knowledge that a lion was
near a lion and not some other animal, it might
imitate this growl. It is not likely that it would do
so ; some other sign expressing alarm in general
would probably be used, for the discrimination of the
different sources of danger is probably an achieve
ment beyond this animars power. But if Primitive
Man was placed under the same circumstances, grant
ing that he had begun in a feeble way to exercise
mind, he would almost certainly come in time to
denote a lion by an imitated growl, a wolf by an
imitated whine, and so on. The sighing of the wind,
the flowing of the stream, the beat of the surf, the
note of the bird, the chirp of the grasshopper, the hiss
of the snake, would each be used to express these
things. And gradually a Language would be built up
which included all the things in the environment with
which sound was either directly, indirectly, or acci
dentally associated.

That this method of word-making is natural is seen
in the facility with which it is still used by children ;
and from the early age at which they begin to employ
it the sound Language is clearly one of the very first
forms of speech. All a child's words are of course
gathered through the sense of hearing, but if it can
itself pick up a word direct from the object, it will use
it long before it elects to repeat the conventional
name taught it by its nurse. The child who says moo
for cow, or bow-wow for dog, or tick-lick for watch, or
puff-puff for train, is an authority on the origin of
human speech. Its father, when he talks of the hum
of machinery or the boom of the cannon, when he calls

1 68 THE EVOL UTION OF LANGUA GE.

champagne fizz or a less aristocratic beverage pop, is
following in the wake of the inventors of Language.
Among savage peoples, and especially those en
countering the first rush of new things and thoughts
brought them by the advancing wave of civilization,
word-making is still going on ; and wherever possible
the favorite principle seems to be that of sound.1

How full all Languages are of these sound-words is
known to the philologist, though multitudes of words
in every Language have had their pedigree effaced or
obscured by time. "An Englishman would hardly
guess from the present pronunciation and meaning of
the word pipe what its origin was ; yet when he
compares it with the Low Latin pi pa, French pipe,
pronounced more like our word peep, to chirp, and
meaning such a reed-pipe as shepherds played on, he
then sees how cleverly the very sound of the musical
pipe has been made into a word for all kinds of tubes,
such as tobacco-pipes and water-pipes. Words like
this travel like Indians on the war-path, wiping out
their footmarks as they go. For all we know multi-

1 Among the Coral Islands of the Pacific the savages every
where speak of the white residents in New Caledonia as the
Wee-wee men, or Wee-wees. Cannibals on a dozen different
islands, speaking as many languages, have all this name in com
mon. ]STew Caledonia is a French Penal Settlement, containing
thousands of French convicts, and one's first crude thought is that
the Wee-wees are so named from their size. A moment's re
flection, however, shows that it is taken from their sounds — that
in fact we have here a very pretty example of modern onomato
poeia. These convicts, freed or escaped, find their way over the
Pacific group ; and the natives, seizing at once upon their
characteristic sound, know them as Oui-oui's — a name which
has noAv become general for all Frenchmen in the Southern
Pacific.

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 169

. 5 , .

tudes of our ordinary words may have thus been made
from real sounds, but have now lost beyond recovery
the traces of their first expressiveness." l In the
Chinuk language of the West Coast of America, to cite
a few more of Tylor's instances, a tavern is called a
" heehee-liousv" that is a laughter house, or an amuse
ment house, the word for amusement being taken by
an obvious association from the laughter which it ex
cites. How indirect a derivation may be is illustrated
by the word which the Basutos of South Africa use
for courtier. The buzz of a certain fly resembles the
sound ntsi-ntsi, and they apply this word to those who
buzz round the chief as a fly buzzes round a piece of
meat. As every one knows " papa " for father, is
evolved into papa the pope, and " abba " the Hebrew
for father into abbot. For plurals, a doubling of the
word is often used, but no doubt at first quantity was
expressed by gestures or by numbering on the fingers.
" Orang " is the Malay for Man, " Orang-orang " for
men while "Orang-utan" is wild man. Verbs are
formed on the same principle as nouns. In the
Tecnna language of Brazil the verb to sneeze is
haitschu, while the Welsh for a sneeze is tis. Other
verbs which came to have large and comprehensive
meanings arose out of the simple activities and oc
cupations of primitive life. Thus the first verb in the
Bible, the Hebrew " bara " now meaning create, was
originally used for cutting or hewing, the first step in
making things. In the Borneo language of Africa, the
verb " to make " comes from the word tando, to weave.
In English, "to suffer" meant to bear as a burden,
and to " apprehend an idea " was originally to " catch
1 Tylor, Anthropology y p. 127.

170 THE EVOL UT10N OF LANG UA G E.

hold" of some "sight." Even Max Miiller who op
poses the onomatopoetic theory with regard to the
origin of most words, agrees that the sounds of the
occupation of men, and especially of men working
together, and making special sounds at their task-
such as builders, soldiers, and sailors— are widely rep
resented in modern speech.

Though mimicry, sometimes exact, but probably
more often a mere echo or suggestion of the sound to
be recalled, is responsible for some of the material of
Language, multitudes of words appear to have no such
origin. There are infinitely more words than sounds
in the world ; and even things which have very dis
tinct sounds have been named without any regard to
them. The inventors of the word watch, for instance,
did not call it tick-tick but watch, the idea being taken
from the icatchman who walked about at night and
kept the time ; and when the steam-engine appeared,
instead of taking the obvious sound-name puff-puff, it
was called engine (Lat. ingenium), to signify that it
was a work of genius. These modern words, however,
are the coinages of an intellectual age, and it was to
be expected that the inventors should look deeper
below the surface. How those words which have no
apparent association with sound were formed in early
times remains a mystery. With some the original
sound-association has probably been lost ; in the case
of others, the association may have been so indirect as
to be now untraceable. The sounds available in sav
age life for word-making could never have been so
numerous as the things requiring names, and as civili
zation advanced the old words would be used in new
connections, while wholly new terms must have been

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 171

coined from time to time. Both these methods— the
habit of generalizing unconsciously from single terms,
and the trick of coining new words in a wholly con
ventional way— are still continually employed by sav
ages as well as by children. Thus, to take an example
of the first, Mr. John Moir, one of the earliest white
men to settle in East Central Africa, was at once
named by the natives Mandala, which means " a re
flection in still water," because he wore on his eyes
what looked to them a still water (spectacles). After
wards they came to call not only Mr. Moir by that
name, but spectacles, and finally— when it entered
the country— glass itself. Examples of generalization
among children abound in every nursery. A child is
taken to the window by his nurse to see the moon.
The easy monosyllable is caught up at once, and for
some time the child applies it indiscriminately to any
thing bright or shining — the gas, the candle, the fire
light are each "the moon." Mr. Romanes records a
case where a child made a similar use of the word star
—the gas, the candle, the firelight were each " a star."
If the makers of Language proceeded on this principle,
no wonder the philologist has riddles to read. How
often must the savage children of the world have
started off naming things from two such different
points ? Mr. Romanes mentions a still more elaborate
example which was furnished him by Mr. Darwin :
" The child, who was just beginning to speak, called a
duck ' quack,' and, by special association, it also called
water 'quack.' By tin appreciation of the resemblance
of qualities, it next extended the term 'quack' to
denote all birds and insects on the one hand, and all
fluid substances on the other. Lastly, by a still more

172 THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE.

delicate appreciation of resemblance, the child eventu
ally called all coins ' quack,' because on the back of a
French sou it had once seen the representation of an
eagle. Jlence, to the child, the sign ' quack,' from
having originally had a very specialized meaning, be
came more and more extended in its significance, until
it now seems to designate such apparently different
objects as ' fly,' ' wine,' and ' coin.' " l

The instructiveness of this, in showing the reason
why philology is often so helplessly at a loss in track
ing far-strayed words to their original sense, is plain.
In the nature of the case, the onomatopoetic theory
can never be proved in more than a fraction of cases.
So cunning is the mind in associating ideas, so swift
in making new departures, that the clue to multitudes
of words must be obliterated by time, even if the first
forms and spellings of the words themselves remain
in their original integrity — which rarely happens — to
offer a feasible point to start the search from.

But it is far from necessary to assume that all
words should have had a rational ancestry. On the
contrary many words are probably deliberate artifi
cial inventions. When not only every human being,
but every savage and every child has the ability as
well as the right to call anything it likes by any name
it chooses, it is vain in every case to seek for any gen
eral principle underlying the often arbitrary conjunc
tions of letters and sounds which we call words.
Words cannot all at least be treated with the same
scientific regard as we would treat organic forms.
When dissected, in the nature of the case, they cannot
be expected to reveal specific structure such as one
1 Mental Evolution, p. 283.

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 173

finds in a fern or a, cray-fish. A fern or a cray-fish
is the expression of an infinitely subtle and intricate
adaptation, while a word may be a mere caprice.
Perhaps, indeed, the greatest marvel about philology
is that there should be a philology at all— that
Languages should be so rich in association, so
pregnant with the history and poetry of the past.
Into the problem, therefore, of how the infinite
variety of words in a Language was acquired it is
unnecessary to enter at length. Once the idea
had dawned of expressing meaning by sounds, the
formation of words and even of Languages is a mere
detail. We have probably all invented words. Al
most every family of children invents words of its
own, and cases are known where quite considerable
Languages have been manufactured in the nursery.
When boys play at brigands and pirates they invent
pass-words and names, and from mere love of secrets
and mysteries concoct vocabularies which no one can
understand but themselves.

This simple fact indeed has been used with great
plausibility to account for differences in dialect among
different tribes, and even for the partial origin of new
Languages. Thus the structure of the Indian lan
guages has long puzzled philologists. Whitney in
forms us that as regards the material of expression,
there is "irreconcilable diversity" among them.
"There are a very considerable number of groups
between whose significant signs exist no more appar
ent correspondences than between those of English,
Hungarian, and Malay ; none namely which may not
be merely fortuitous." To account for these dialects
a suggestion, as interesting as it is ingenious, has been

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;H3~ 8 R Alt I

"^ * sfi

Li\

TOBOMTO

174 THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE.

advanced by Dr. Hale. Imagine the case of a family
of Red Indians, father, mother, and half a dozen
children, in the vicissitudes of war, cut oft' from their
tribe. Suppose the father to be scalped and the
mother soon to die. The little ones left to themselves
in some lonely valley, living upon roots and herbs,
would converse for a time by using the few score
words they had heard from their parents. But as
they grew up they would require new words and
would therefore coin them. As they became a tribe
they would require more words, and so in time a Lan
guage might arise, all the words expressive of the
simpler relations — father, mother, tent, fire — being
common to other Indian Languages, but all the later
words purely arbitrary and necessarily a standing
puzzle to philology. The curious thing is that this
theory is borne out by some most interesting geo
graphical facts. " If, under such circumstances, dis
ease, or the casualties of a hunter's life should carry
oft* the parents, the survival of the children would, it
is evident, depend mainly upon the nature of the
climate and the ease with which food could be pro
cured at all seasons of the year. In ancient Europe,
after the present climatal conditions were established,
it is doubtful if a family of children under ten years
of age could have lived through a single winter. We
are not, therefore, surprised to find that no more than
four or five linguistic stocks are represented in
Europe. Of North America, east of the Rocky Mount
ains and north of the tropics, the same may be said.
The climate and the scarcity of food in winter forbid
us to suppose that a brood of orphan children could
have survived, except possibly, by a fortunate chance,

THE EVOL UTION OF LANG UAGE. 1 7 5

111 some favored spot on the shore of the Mexican Gulf,
where shell-fish, berries, and edible roots are abundant
and easy of access. But there is one region where
Nature seems to offer herself as the willing nurse and
bountiful stepmother of the feeble and unprotected.
Of all countries on the globe, there is probably not
one in which a little flock of very young children
would find the means of sustaining existence more
readily than in California. Its wonderful climate,
mild and equable beyond example, is well known.
Half the months are rainless. Snow and ice are
almost strangers. There are fully two hundred cloud
less days in every year. Roses bloom in the open air
through all seasons. Berries of many sorts are in
digenous and abundant. Large fruits and edible nuts
on low and pendant boughs may be said in Milton's
phrase to ' hang amiable.' Need we wonder that in
such a mild and fruitful region, a great number of
separate tribes were found speaking languages which
careful investigation has classed in nineteen distinct
linguistic stocks ? " l Even more striking is the case
of Oregon on the Californian border, which is also a
favored and luxuriant land. The number of linguistic
stocks in this narrow district is more than twice as
large as in the whole of Europe.2

1 Dr. Hale. Cf. Romanes, Mental Evolution in Man, p. 260.

2 The construction of the mouth and lips has of course had
something to do with differences in Languages, and even with
the possibility of language in the case of Man. You must have
your trumpet before you can get the sound of a trumpet. One
reason why many animals have no speech is simply that they
have not the mechanism which by any possibility could produce
it. They might have a Language, but nothing at all like human
Language. It is one of the significant notes in Evolution that

176 THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE.

In such ways as these we may conceive of early
Man building up the fabric of speed). In time his
vocabulary would enlarge and become, so far as ob
jects in the immediate environment were concerned,
fairly complete. As Man gained more knowledge of
the things around him, as he came into larger relations
with his fellows, as life became more rich and com
plex, this accumulation of words would go on, each
art as it was introduced creating new terms, each
science pouring in contributions to the fund, until the
materials of human speech became more and more
complete. This process was never finished. The
evolution of Language is still going on. No corrobo-
ration of the theory of the evolution of Language could
be more perfect than the simple fact that it has gone
on steadily down to the present hour and is going on
now. Tens of thousands of words — no longer now
onomatopoetic — have been evolved since Johnson corn-
Man, almost alone among vertebrates, has a material body so far
developed as to make it an available instrument for speech.
There was almost certainly a time when this was to him a physi
cal impossibility.

" The acquisition of articulate speech," says Prof. Macalaster,
"became possible to man only when the alveolar arch and pala
tine area became shortened and widened, and when his tongue,
by its accommodation to the modified mouth, became shorter
and more horizontally flattened, and the higher refinements of
pronunciation depend for their production upon the more exten
sive modifications in the same direction." Even for differences
in dialect, as the same writer points out, there is a physical basis.
" With the macrodont alveolar arch and the corresponding modi
fied tongue, sibilation is a difficult feat to accomplish, and hence
the sibilant sounds are practically unknown in all the Austra
lian dialects." — British Association : Anthropological Section.
Edinb., 1891.

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 177

piled his dictionary, and every year sees additions not
only to technical terms but to the language of the
people. The English Language is now being grown
on two or three different kinds of soil, and the differ
ent fruits and flavors that result are intercharged and
mixed, to enrich, or adulterate, the common English
tongue. The mere fact that Language-making is a liv
ing art at the present hour, if not an argument against
the theory that Language is a special gift, at least
shows that Man has a special gift of making Language.
If Man could manufacture words in any quantity, there
was little reason why he should have been presented
with them ready-made. The power to manufacture
them is gift enough, and none the less a gift that we
know some of the steps by which it was given, or at
least through which it was exercised. But if the very
words were given him as they stand, it is more than
singular that so many of them should bear traces of
another origin. Even Trench at this point succumbs
to the theory of development, and his testimony is the
more valuable that it is evidently so very much against
the grain to admit it. lie begins by stating appar
ently the opposite: — "The truer answer to the inquiry
how language arose is this : God gave man language
just as He gave him reason, and just because He gave
him reason ; for what is man's word but his reason
coming forth that it may behold itself ? They are in
deed so essentially one and the same that the Greek
language has one word for them both. lie gave it to
him, because he could not be man, that is, a social be
ing, without it." Yet he is too profound a student of
words to fail to qualify this, and had he failed to do so
every page in his well-known book had judged him.
12

178 THE E VOL UTION OF LA NGUAG E.

" Yet," he continues, " this must not be taken to affirm
that man started at the first furnished with a full-
formed vocabulary of words, and as it were with his
first dictionary and first grammar ready-made to
his hands. He did not thus begin the world with
names, but with the power of naming : for man is not a
mere speaking machine; God did not teach him
words, as one of us teaches a parrot, from without ;
but gave him a capacity, and then evoked the capacity
which he gave.1 "

If the theory just given as to the formation of
Language, or at least as to the possible formation of
Language, be more than a fairy tale, there is another
quarter in which corroboration of an important kind
should lie. Hitherto we have examined as witnesses,
the makers of words; it may be worth while for a
moment to place in the witness-box the words them
selves. A chemist has two methods of determining
the composition of any body, analysis and synthesis.
Having seen how words may be built up, it remains
for us to see whether on analysis they bear trace of
having been built up in the way, and from the ele
ments, suggested. Comparative Philology has now
made an actual investigation into the words and
structure of all known Languages, and the informa
tion sought by the evolutionist lies ready-made to his
hand. So far as controversy might be expected to
arise here on the theory of development itself, there
is none. For the first fact to interest us in this new
region is that every student of . Language seems to
have been compelled to give in his adherence to the
general theory of Evolution. All agree with Renan
1 Archbishop Trench, The Study of Words, pp. 14, 15.

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 179

that " Sans doubte les langues, comme tout ce qui
est organise, sont sujettes a la loi du development
graduel." And even Max Mailer, the least thorough
going from an evolutionary point of view of all philol
ogists, asserts that " no student of the science of Lan
guage can be anything but an evolutionist, for, wher
ever he looks, he sees nothing but evolution going on
all around him."

The outstanding discovery of the dissector of
words is that, vast and complex as Languages ap
pear, they are really composed of few and simple
elements. Take the word "evolutionary." The ter
mination " ary " is a late addition added to this and
to thousands of other words for a special purpose;
the same applies to the syllable "tion." The first
letter e distinguishes evolution from convolution,
revolution, involution, and is also a later growth.
None of these extra syllables is of first importance;
by themselves they have almost no meaning. The
part which will not disappear or melt away into mere
grammar, on which the stress of the sense hangs, is
the syllable " vol " or " volv," and, so far as the English
language is concerned, it is to be looked upon as the
root. By running it to earth in older languages its
source is found in a still more radical word, and
therefore it must next be blotted out of the list of
primitive words. By patient comparison of all other
words with all other words, of Languages with
Languages, and apparent roots with apparent roots,
the supposed primitive roots of Language have been
found. Just as all the multifarious objects in the
material world — water, air, earth, flesh, bone, wood,
iron, paper, cloth — are resolvable by the chemist into

180 THE EVOL UT10N OF LA NGUA GE.

some sixty-eight elements, so all the words in each
of the three or four great groups of Language yield
on the last analysis only a few hundred original roots.
That still further analysis may break down some or
many of these is not impossible. But the facts as
they stand are all significant. The further we go
back into the past the Languages become thinner and
thinner, the words fewer and fewer, the grammar
poorer and poorer. Of the thousand known Lan
guages it has been found possible to reduce all to three
or four — probably three — great families ; and each of
these in turn is capable of almost unlimited philo
logical pruning. In analyzing the Sanskrit language,
Professor Max Miiller reduces its whole vocabulary to
121 roots — the 121 " original concepts." " These 121
concepts constitute the stock-in-trade with which I
maintain that every thought that has ever passed
through the mind of India, so far as known to us in
its literature, has been expressed. It would have been
easy to reduce that number still further, for there are
several among them which could be ranged together
under more general concepts. But I leave this
further reduction to others, being satisfied as a first
attempt with having shown how small a number of
seeds may produce, and has produced, the enormous
intellectual vegetation that has covered the soil of
India from the most distant antiquity to the present
day." l

That a " first attempt " should have succeeded in
reducing this vast family of Languages to 121 words
is significant. The exhumation by philology of this
early cluster reminds one of the discovery of the seg-

lSclence of Thonyht, p. 549.

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 181

merited ovum in embryology. Such clusters appear
at an early stage in the history of all developments.
The processes which precede this stage are of the
utmost subtlety, but in embryology they have yielded
to the latter analysis of the microscope. So it may be
one day with the natural history of Language. We
may never, for obvious reasons, get back to the actual
beginning, but we may get nearer. When the em-
bryologist reached his cluster of cells in the segmented
ovum, he did not believe he had found the dawn of
life. What further the philologist may find remains
a mystery. Where these 121 words came from may
never be known. But the development from that
point sufficiently shows that words, like everything
else, have followed the universal law, and that Lan
guages, starting from small beginnings, have grown
in volume, intricacy, and richness, as time rolled on.
" All philologists," says Romanes, " will now agree
with Geiger — ' Language diminishes the further we
look back, in such a way that we cannot forbear con
cluding it must once have had no existence at all.' "

The history of progress for a long time henceforth
is the history of the progress of Language and the
increase in intelligence which necessarily went along
with it. From being able to say what he knew, Man
went on to write what he knew. The Evolution of
writing went through the same general stages as the
Evolution of Speech. First there was the onomato-
poetic writing — as it were, the growl-writing— the ideo
graph, the imitation of an actual object. This is the
form we find fossil in the Egyptian hieroglyphic. For
a man a man was drawn, for a camel a camel, for a
hut a hut. Then intonation was added — accents, that

182 THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE.

is, for extra meaning or extra emphasis. Then to
save time the objects were drawn in shorthand — a
couple of dashes for the limbs and one across, as in
the Chinese for man ; a square in the same language
for a field ; two strokes at an obtuse angle, suggesting
the roof, for a house. To express further qualities,
these abbreviated pictures were next compounded in
ingenious ways. A man arid a field together conveyed
the idea of wealth, and because a man with a field was
rich, he was supposed to be happy, and the same com
bination stood, and stands to this day, for content
ment. When a roof is drawn and a woman beneath
it — or the strokes which represent a roof and a woman
— we have the idea of a woman at home, a woman at
peace, and hence the symbol comes to stand for quiet
ness and rest. Chinese writing is picture-writing,
with the pictures degenerated into dashes — a lingual
form of the modern impressionism.

When writing was fully evolved, this height was
only the starting-point for some new development.
Every summit in Evolution is the base of some
grander peak. Speech, whether by writing or by
spoken word, is too crude and slow to keep pace with
the needs of the now swiftly ascending rnind. Man's
larger life demands a further specialization of this
power. He learned to speak at first because he
could not convey his thoughts to his wife at the other
side of the wood. It was Space that made him speak.
He now learns to speak better because he cannot con
vey his thoughts to the other end of the world. This
new distance-language began again at the beginning,
just as all Language does, by employing signs. Man
invented the telegraph — a little needle which makes

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 183

signs to some one at the other side of the world. The
telegraph is a gesture-language, and is therefore only
a primitive stage. Man found this out and from signs
went on to sounds — he invented the telephone. By
all the traditions of Evolution this marvellous instru
ment ought to be, and is even now on the verge of be
ing, the vehicle of the distance-language of the future.
Is this the end? It is by no means likely. The
mind is feeling about already for more perfect forms
of human intercourse than telegraphed or telephoned
words. As there was a stage in the ascent of Man at
which the body was laid aside as a finished product,
and made to give way to Mind, there may be a stage
in the Evolution of Mind when its material achieve
ments — its body — shall be laid aside and give place
to a higher form of Mind. Telepathy has already
become a word, not a word for thought-reading or
muscle-reading, but a scientific word. It means "the
ability of one mind to impress, or to be impressed by
another mind otherwise than through the recognized
channels of sense." l By men of science, adepts in
mental analysis, aware of all sources of error, armed
against fraud, this subject is now being made the
theme of exhaustive observation. It is too soon to
pronounce. Practically we are in the dark. But
there are those in this fascinating and mysterious
region who tell us that the possibilities of a more in
timate fellowship of man with man, and soul with
soul, are not to be looked upon as settled by our pres
ent views of matter or of mind. However little we
know of it, however remote we are from it, whether it
ever be realized or not, telepathy is theoretically the
1 Phantasms of the Living, p. 6.

184 THE E VOL UTION OF LAN G UA GE.

next stage in the Evolution of Language. As we have
seen, the introduction of speech into the world was
delayed, not because the possibilities of it were not in
Nature, but because the instrument was not quite
ready. Then the instrument came, and Man spoke.
The development of the organ and the development of
the function went on together, arrived together, were
perfected together. What delayed the gesture-lan
guage of the telegraph was not that electricity was
not in Nature, but the want of the instrument.
When that came, the gesture-language came, and both
were perfected together. What delayed the telephone
Avas not that its principle was not in Nature, but that
the instrument was not ready. What now delays its
absolute victory of space is not that space cannot be
bridged, but that it is not ready. May it not be that
that which delays the power to transport and drive
one's thought as thought to whatever spot one wills,
is not the fact that the possibility is withheld by
Nature, but that the hour is not quite come— that the
instrument is not yet fully ripe? Are there no signs,
is the feeling after it no sign, are there not even now
some facts, to warrant us in treating it, after all that
Evolution has given us, as a still possible gift to the
human race ? What strikes one most in running the
eye up this graduated ascent is that the movement is
in the direction of what one can only call spirituality.
From the growl of a lion we have passed to the
whisper of a soul; from the motive fear, to the motive
sympathy ; from the icy physical barriers of space, to
a nearness closer than breathing ; from the torturing
slowness of time to time's obliteration. If Evolution
reveals anything, if science itself proves anything, it

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 185

is that Man is a spiritual being and that the direction
of his long career is towards an ever larger, richer,
and more exalted life. On the final problem of Man's
being the voice of science is supposed to be dumb.
But this gradual perfecting of instruments, and, as
each arrives, the further revelation of what lies be
hind in Nature, this gradual refining of the mind, this
increasing triumph over matter, this deeper knowl
edge, this efflorescence of the soul, are facts which even
Science must reckon with. Perhaps, after all, Victor
Hugo is right : " I am the tadpole of an archangel."

Before closing this outline two of the many omit
ted points may be briefly referred to. In thinking of
Language as a " discovery," it is not necessary to as
sume that that discovery involved the pre-existence
of very high mental powers. These were probably
developed part passu with Speech, but did not neces
sarily ante-date it to such a degree as to make the
preceding argument a petitio princrpu. Obviously the
discovery of Language could not in the first instance
have been responsible for the Evolution of Mind, since
Man must already have had Mind enough to discover
it. But this does not necessarily imply any very high
grade of intellect— very high, that is to say, as com
pared with other contemporary animals — for it is pos
sible that a comparatively slight rise in intelligence
might have led to the initial step from which all the
others might follow in rapid succession. An illustra
tion, suggested by a remark of Cope's, may help to
make plain how a very slight cause may initiate
changes of an almost radical order and on the most
gigantic scale.

1 80 THE EVO L UTION OF LA NG UA GE.

In part of the Arctic regions at this moment there
is no such thing as liquid. Matter is only known
there in the solid form. The temperature may be
thirty-one degrees below zero, or thirty-one degrees
above zero without making the slightest difference;
there can be nothing there but ice, glacier, and those
crystals of ice which we call snow. But suppose the
temperature rose two degrees, the difference would be
indescribable. While no change for sixty degrees
below that point made the least difference, the almost
inappreciable addition of two degrees changes the
country into a world of water. The glaciers, under
the new conditions, retreat into the mountains, the
vesture of ice drops into the sea, a garment of green
ness clothes the land. So, in the animal world, a very
small rise beyond the animal maximum may open the
door for a revolution. With a brain of so many cubic
inches, and so many pounds of brain matter, we have
animal intelligence. Everything below that limit is
animal, and the number of inches or pounds below it
makes no difference. But pass to a brain not a few
but many pounds heavier, many cubic inches larger,
and very much more convoluted, and it is conceivable
that in passing from the lower to the higher figures
some such change might occur as that which differ
entiates solid from liquid in the case of water. What
the chemist calls a "critical point" might thus be
passed, and from a condition associated with certain
properties — though in the brain we must speak of
accompaniments rather than properties — a condition
associated with certain other properties might be the
result. Thus, as Cope says, " some Rubicon has been
crossed, some flood-gate has been opened, which marks

THE EVOL UTION OF LANG UA GE. 187

one of Nature's great transitions, such as have been
called ' expression-points' of progress." A slight rise
in intelligence might lead to the first acquisition of
Speech, and from this point the rise might be at once
exceedingly swift and in directions wholly new. The
illustration is not to be taken for more than it seeks
to illustrate — which is not the method of transition as
to qualitative detail, but simply the fact that an ap
parently slight change may have startling and indefi
nite results.

The last difficulty is this. If the connection be
tween Mind, and Language is so vital, why do not
Birds, many of which apparently speak, emulate Man
in mental power? If his speech is largely responsible
for his intelligence, why have not Birds — the parrot,
.for instance — attained the same intelligence ? Several
answers might be suggested to the question, and sev
eral kinds of answers — biological, physiological, philo
logical, and psychological. But the real answer is the
general one, that to make animals human required
a conspiracy of circumstances which neither Birds nor
any other animal fell heir to. It was one chance in a
million that the multitude of co-operating conditions
which pushed Man onward were fulfilled ; and though
it may never be known what these conditions were, it
was doubtless from the failure on the one hand to
meet one or more of them, and on the other from the
success with which openings in other directions were
pursued by competing species, that Man was left alone
during the later aeons of his ascent.

The progenitors of Birds and the progenitors of
Man at a very remote period were probably one. But
at a certain point they parted company and diverged

188 THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE.

hopelessly and forever. The Birds took one road, the
Vertebrates another; the Vertebrates kept to the
ground, the Birds took to the air. The consequences
of this expedient in the case of the Birds were fatal.
They forever forfeited the possibility of becoming
human. For observe the cost to them of the aerial
mode of life. The wing was made at the expense of
the hand. With this consummate organ buried in
feathers, the use which the higher Vertebrates made
of it was denied them. Birds have the bones for a
hand, could have had a hand, but they waived their
right to it. When it is considered how much Man
owes to the hand it may be conceived how much they
have lost by the want of it. Had Man not been a
"tool-using animal," he had probably never become
a man ; the Bird, partly because it placed itself out of
the running here, has never been anything but a Bird.
To one organism only was it given to keep on the
path of progress from the beginning to the end, and
so fulfil without deviation or relapse the final purpose
of Evolution.

CHAPTER VI.

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.

MATTHEW ARNOLD, in a well-remembered line, de
scribes a bird in Kensington Gardens " deep in its un
known day's employ." But, peace to the poet, its
employ is all too certain. Its day is spent in strug
gling to get a living; and a very hard day it is. It
awoke at daybreak and set out to catch its morning
meal; but another bird was awake before it, and it
lost its chance. With fifty other breakfastless birds,
it had to bide its time, to scour the country ; to pros
pect the trees, the grass, the ground ; to lie in ambush ;
to attack and be defeated ; to hope and be forestalled.
At every meal the same programme is gone through,
and every day. As the seasons change the pressure
becomes more keen. Its supplies are exhausted, and
it has to take wing for hundreds and thousands of
miles to find new hunting-ground. This is how birds
live, and this is how birds are made. They are the
children of Struggle. Beak and limb, claw and wing,
shape, strength, all down to the last detail, are the ex
pressions of their mode of life.

This is how the early savage lived, and this is how
he was made. The first practical problem in the

189

190 THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.

Ascent of Man was to get him started on his upward
path. It was not enough for Nature to equip him
with a body, and plant his foot on the lowest rung of
the ladder. She must introduce into her economy
some great principle which should secure, not for him
alone but for every living thing, that they should work
upward toward the top. The inertia of things is such
that without compulsion they will never move. And
so admirably has this compulsion been applied that its
forces are hidden in the very nature of life itself — the
very act of living contains within it the principles of
progress. An animal cannot be without becoming.

The first great principle into the hands of which
this mighty charge was given is the Struggle for Life.
It is one of the chief keys for unlocking the mystery
of Man's Ascent, and so important in all development
that Mr. Darwin assigns it the supreme rank among
the factors in Evolution. " Unless," he says, " it be
thoroughly engrained in the mind, the whole economy
of Nature, with every fact on distribution, rarity,
abundance, extinction, and variation, will be dimly
seen or quite misunderstood." I low, under the press
ures of this great necessity to work for a living, the
Ascent of Man has gone on, we have now to inquire.
Though not to the extent that is usually supposed, yet
in part under this stimulus, he has slowly emerged
from the brute-existence, and, entering a path where
the possibilities of development are infinite, has been
pushed on from stage to stage, without premedita
tion, or design, or thought on his part, until he
arrived at that further height where, to the uncon
scious compulsions of a lower environment, there
were added those high incitements <;f conscious

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 191

ideals which completed the work of creating him a
Man.

Start with a comparatively vmevolved savage, and
see what the Struggle for Life will do for him. When
we meet him first he is sitting, wre shall suppose, in
the sun. Let us also suppose — and it requires no
imagination to suppose it — that he has no wish to do
anything else than sit in the sun, and that he is per
fectly contented, and perfectly happy. Nature around
him, visible and invisible, is as still as he is, as inert
apparently, as unconcerned. Neither molests the other;
they have no connection with each other. Yet it is
not so. That savage is the victim of a conspiracy.
Nature has designs upon him, wants to do something
to him. That something is to move him. Why does
it wish to move him ? Because movement is work, and
work is exercise, and exercise may mean a further
evolution of the part of him that is exercised. How
does it set about moving him ? By moving itself.
Everything else being in motion, it is impossible for
him to resist. The sun moves away to the west and
he must move or freeze with cold. As the sun con
tinues to move, twilight falls and wild animals move
from their lairs and he must move or be eaten. The
food he ate in the morning has dissolved and moved
away to nourish the cells of his body, and more food
must soon be moved to take its place or he must
starve. So he starts up, he works, he seeks food,
shelter, safety ; and those movements make marks in
his body, brace muscles, stimulate nerves, quicken
intelligence, create habits, and he becomes more able
and more willing to repeat these movements and so
becomes a stronger and a higher man. Multiply these

192 THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.

movements and you multiply him. Make him do
things he has never done before, and he will become
what he never was before. Let the earth move round
in its orbit till the sun is far away and the winter
snows begin to fall. lie must either move away, and
move away very fast, to find the sun again ; or he must
chase, and also very fast, some thick-furred animal,
and kill it, and clothe himself with its skin. Thus
from a man he has become a hunter, a different kind
of a man, a further man. He did not wish to become
a hunter; he had to become a hunter. All that he
wished was to sit in the sun and be let alone, and but
for a Nature around him which would not rest, or let
him alone, he would have sat on there till he died.
The universe has to be so ordered that that which Man
would not have done alone he should be compelled to
do. In other words it was necessary to introduce into
Nature, and into Human Nature, some such principle
as the Struggle for Life. For the first law of Evolu
tion is simply the first law of motion. " Every body
continues in a state of rest, or of uniform motion in a
straight line, unless it is compelled by impressed forces
to change that state." Nature supplied that savage
with the impressed forces, with something which he
was compelled to respond to. -Without that, he would
have continued forever as he was.

Apart from the initial appetite, Hunger, the stimu
lus of Environment — that which necessitates Man to
struggle for life — is twofold. The first is inorganic
nature, including heat and cold, climate and weather,
earth, air, water — the material world. The second is
the world of life, comprehending all plants and ani
mals, and especially those animals ngainst whom prim-

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 193

itive Man has always to struggle most — other primi
tive Men. All that Man is, all the arts of life, all the
gifts of civilization, all the happiness and joy and prog
ress of the world, owe much of their existence to that
double war.

Follow it a little further. Go back to a time when
Man was just emerging from the purely animal state,
when he was in the condition described by Mr. Dar
win, "a tailed quadruped probably arboreal in its
habits," and when in his glimmering consciousness
mind was feeling about for its first uses in snatching
some novel success in the Struggle for Life. This
hypothetical creature, so far as bodily structure was
concerned, was presumably not very vigorous. Had
he been more vigorous he might never have evolved at
all ; as it was, he fled for refuge not to his body but to
a stratagem of the Mind. When threatened by a com
rade, or pressed by an alien-species, he called in a
simple foreign aid to help him in the Struggle — the
branch of a tree. Whether the discovery was an acci
dent ; whether the idea was caught from the falling of
a bough, or a blow from a branch waving in the wind,
is of no consequence. This broken branch became the
first weapon. It was the father of all clubs. The day
this discovery was made, the Struggle for Life took a
new departure. Hitherto animals fought with some
specialized part of their own bodies — tooth, limb, claw.
Now they took possession of the armory of material
Nature.

This invention of the club was soon followed by
another change. To use a club effectively, or to keep
a good look-out for enemies or for food, a man must
stand erect. This alters the centre of gravity o+' tlio

194 THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.

body, and as the act becomes a habit, subsidiary
changes slowly take place in other parts. In time the
erect position becomes confirmed. Man owes what
Bums calls his " heaven-erected face " to the Struggle
for Life. How recent this change is, how new the
attitude still is to him, is seen from the simple fact
that even yet he has not attained the power of retain
ing the erect position long. Most men sit down when
they can, and so unnatural is the standing position, so
unstable the equilibrium, that when slightly sick or
faint, Man cannot stand at all.

Possibly both the erect position and the Club had
another origin, but the detail is immaterial. This
" hairy-tailed quadruped, arboreal in its habits," must
sometimes have wandered or been driven into places
where trees were few and far between. It is conceiv
able that an animal, accustomed to get along mainly
by grasping something, should have picked up a
branch and held it in its hand, partly to use as a
crutch, partly as a weapon, and partly to raise itself
from the ground in order to keep a better look-out
in crossing treeless spaces. An Orang-outang may
now be seen in the Zoological gardens in Java,
which promenades about its bower continually with
the help of a stick, and seems to prefer the erect
position so long as the stick or any support is at
hand.

The next stage after the invention of anything is to
improve upon it, or to make a further use of it. Both
these things now happened. One day the stick,
wrenched rapidly from the tree, happened to be left
with a jagged end. The properties of the point were
discovered. Now there were two classes of weapons

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 195

in the world — the blunt stick and the pointed stick —
that is to say, the Club and the Spear.

In using these weapons at first, neither probably
was allowed to leave the hand. But already their
owners had learned to hurl down branches from the
tree-tops, and bombard their enemies with nuts and
fruits. Hence they came to throw their clubs and
spears, and so missiles were introduced. Under this
new use, the primitive weapons themselves received
a further specialization. From the heavy bludgeon
would arise on the one hand the shaped war-club, and
on the other the short throwing club, or waddy. The
spear would pass into the throwing assegai, or the
ponderous weapon such as the South Sea Islanders
use to-day. From the natural point of a torn branch
to the sharpening of a point deliberately is the next
improvement. From rubbing the point against the
sharp edge of a large stone, to picking up a sharp-
edged small stone and using it as a knife, is but a
step. So, by the mere necessities of the Struggle for
Life, development went on. Man became a tool-using
animal, and the foundations of the Arts were laid.
Next, the man who threw his missile furthest, had the
best chance in the Struggle for Life. To throw to
still greater distances, and with greater precision, he
sought out mechanical aids — the bow, the boomerang,
the th rowing-stick, and the sling. Then instead of
using his own strength he borrowed strength from
nature, mixed different kinds of dust together and
invented gunpowder. All our modern weapons of
precision, from the rifle to the long range gun, are
evolutions from the missiles of the savage. These
suggestions are not mere fancies ; in savage tribes

196 THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.

existing in the world to-day these different stages in
Evolution may still be seen.

After weapons of offence came weapons of defence.
At first the fighting savage sheltered himself at the
back of a tree. Then when he wished to pass to
another tree he tore off part of the bark, took it with
him, and made the first shield. Where the trees were
without suitable bark, he would plait his shield from
canes, grasses, and the midribs of the leaves, or con
struct them from frameworks of wood and skins. In
times of peace these hollow shields, lying idly about
the huts, would find new uses — baskets, cradles, and,
in an evolved form, coracles or boats. In leisure
hours also, new virtues discovered themselves in the
earlier implements of war and of the chase. The
twang of his bow suggested memories that were
pleasant to his ear; he kept on twanging it, and so
made music. Because two bows twanged better than
one, he twanged two bows ; then he made himself a
two-stringed bow from the first, and ended with a
"ten-stringed instrument." By and bye came the
harp ; later, the violin. The whistling of the wind in
a hollow reed prepared the way for the flute ; a conch-
shell, broken at the helix, gave him the trumpet.
Two flints struck together yielded fire.

Trifling, almose puerile, as these beginnings look to
us now, remember they were once the serious realities
of life. The club and spear of the savage are toys to
us to-day ; but we forget that the rude shafts of wood
which adorn our halls were all the world to early Man
and represented the highest expression and daily in
strument of his evolution. These primitive weapons
are the pathetic expression of the world's first Strug-

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 197

gle. As the earliest contribution of mankind to solve
its still fundamental difficulty — the problem of Nutri
tion — they are of enduring interest to the human race.
So far from being, as one might suppose, mere imple
ments of destruction, they are implements of self-
preservation ; they entered the world not from hate
of Man but for love of life. Why was the spear in
vented, and the sling, and the bow? In the first
instance because Man needed the bird and the deer for
food. Why from implements of the chase did they
change into implements of war ? Because other men
wanted the bird and the deer, and the first possessor,
as populations multiplied, must protect his food-
supply. The parent of all industries is Hunger : the
creator of civilization in its earlier forms is the Strug
gle for Life.

By hollowing a pit in the ground, planting his
spear, or a pointed stake, upright in the centre, and
covering the mouth with boughs, Man could trap
even the largest game. When the climate became
cold, he stripped off the skin and became the possessor
of clothes. With a stone for a hammer, he broke
open molluscs on the shore, or speared or trapped the
fish in the shoals. Digging for roots with his pointed
stick in time suggested agriculture. From imitating
the way wild fruits and grains were sown by Nature
he became a gardener and grew crops. To possess a
crop means to possess an estate, and to possess an
estate is to give up wandering and begin that more
settled life in which all the arts of industry must
increase. Catching the young of wild animals and
keeping them, first as playthings, then for supplies ot
meat or milk, or, in the case of the dog, for helping in

198 THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.

the chase, he perceived the value of domestic animals.
So Man slowly passed from the animal to the savage,
so his mind was tamed, and strengthened, and bright
ened, and heightened; so the sense of power grew
strong, and so virtus, which is to say virtue, was
born.

In struggling with Nature, early Man not only
found material satisfactions : he found himself. Jt
was this that made him, body, mind, character, and
disposition ; and it was this largely that gave to the
world different kinds of men, different kinds of bodies,
minds, characters, and dispositions. The first moral
and intellectual diversifiers of men are to be sought for
in geography and geology — in the factors which deter
mine the circumstances in which men severally con
duct their Struggle for Life. If the land had been all
the same, the Struggle for Life had been all the same,
and if the Struggle for Life had been all the same, life
itself had been all the same. But to no two sets of
men is the world ever quite the same. The theatre
of struggle varies with every degree of latitude, with
every change of altitude, with every variation of soil.
In most countries three separate regions are found —
a maritime region, an agricultural region, a pastoral
region. In the first, the belt along the shore, the
people are fishermen; in the second, the lowlands
and alluvial plains, the people are farmers ; in the
third, the highlands and plateaux, they are shepherds.
As men are nothing but expressions of their en
vironments, as the kind of life depends on how men
get their living, each set of men becomes changed
in different ways. The fisherman's life is a pre
carious life ; he becomes hardy, resolute, self-re-

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 199

liant. The farmer's life is a settled life; lie becomes,
tame, he loves home, he feeds on grains and fruits
which take the heat out of his blood and make him
domestic and quiet. The shepherd is a wanderer ; he
is much alone ; the monotonies of grass make him
dull and moody ; the mountains awe him : the protec
tor of his flock, he is a man of war. So arise types of
men, types cf industries ; and by and bye, by exoga-
mous marriage, blends of these types, and further
blends of infinite variety. "It is so ordered by
Nature, that by so striving to live they develop their
physical structure: they obtain faint glimmerings of
reason ; they think and deliberate ; they become Man.
In the same way, the primeval men have no other
object than to keep the clan alive. It is so ordered by
Nature that in striving to preserve the existence of
the clan, they not only acquire the arts of agriculture,
domestication, and navigation : they not only discover
fire, and its uses in cooking, in war, and in metal
lurgy ; they not only detect the hidden properties of
plants, and apply them to save their own lives from
disease, and to destroy their enemies in battle ; they
not only learn to manipulate Nature and to distribute
water by machinery ; but they also, by means of the
life-long battle, are developed into moral beings." :
Nature being " everything that is," and Man being in
every direction immersed in it and dependent on it,
can never escape its continuous discipline. Some en
vironment there must always be; and some change
of environment, no matter how minute, there must
always be ; and some change, no matter how imper
ceptible, must be always wrought in him.

1 Wimvood Eeade, Martyrdom of Man, p. 404.

THE STRUGGLE FOE LIFE.

We now see, perhaps, more clearly why Evolution
at the dawn of life entered into league with so strange
an ally as Want. The Evolution of Mankind was too
great a thing to entrust to any uncertain hand. The
advantage of attaching human progress to the Strug
gle for Life is that you can always depend upon it,
Hunger never fails. All other human appetites have
their periods of activity and stagnation ; passions wax
and wane; emotions are casual and capricious. But
the continuous discharge of the function of Nutrition
is interrupted only by the final interruption— Death.
Death means, in fact, little more than an interference
with the function of Nutrition; it means that the
Struggle for Life having broken down, there can be
no more life, no further evolution. Hence, it has been
ordained that Life and Struggle, Health and Struggle,
Growth and Struggle, Progress and Struggle, shall be
linked together; that whatever the chances of mis
direction, the apparent losses, the mysterious ac
companiments of strife and pain, the Ascent of Man
should be bound up with living. When it is remem
bered that, at a later day, Morality and Struggle, and
even Religion and Struggle, are bound so closely that
it is impossible to conceive of them apart, the tre
mendous value of this principle and the necessity for
providing it with indestructible foundations, will be
perceived.

This association of the Struggle for Life with the
physiological function of Nutrition must be con
tinually borne in mind. For the essential nature of
the principle has been greatly obscured by the very
name which Mr. Darwin gave to it. Probably no other
was possible ; but the eft'ect has been that men have

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 201

emphasized the almost ethical substantive " Struggle "
and ignored the biological term " Life." A secondary
implication of the process has thus been elevated into
the prime one; and this, exaggerated by the imagi
nation, has led to Nature being conceived of as a vast
murderous machine for the annihilation of the
majority and the survival of the fe\v. But the Strug
gle for Life, in the first instance, is simply living
itself ; at the best, it is living under a healthily nor
mal maximum of pressure ; at the worst, under an
abnormal maximum. As we have seen, initially, it is
but another name for the discharge of the supreme
physiological function of Nutrition. If life is to go
on at all, this function must be discharged, and con
tinuously discharged. The primary characteristic of
protoplasm, the physical basis of all life, is Hunger,
and this has dictated the first law of being — " Thou
shalt eat." What distinguishes scientifically the
organic from the inorganic, the animal from the stone?
That the animal eats, the stone does not. Almost all
achievement in the early history of the living world
has been due to Hunger. For millenniums nearly the
whole task of Evolution was to perfect the means of
satisfying it, and in so doing to perfect life itself.
The lowest forms of life are little more than animated
stomachs, and in higher groups the nutritive system
is the first to be developed, the first to function, and
the last to cease its work. Almost wholly, indeed, in
the earlier vicissitude of the race, and largely in the
more ordered course of later times, Hunger rules the
life and work and destiny of men ; and so profoundly
does this mysterious deity still dominate the round of
even the highest life that the noblest occupations

202 777^ STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.

which engage the human mind must be interrupted
two or three times a day to do it homage.

Whatever Man came ultimately to wish and to
achieve for himself, it was essential at first that such
arrangements should be made for him. The ma
chinery for his development had not only to be put
into Nature, but he had to be placed in the machine
and held there, and brought back there as often as he
tried to evade it. To say that man evolved himself,
nevertheless, is as absurd as to say that a newspaper
prints itself. To say even that the machinery evolved
him is as preposterous as to say of a poem that the
printing-press made it. The ultimate problem is, Who
made the machine ? and Who thought the poem that
was to be printed ?

If you say that you do not unreservedly approve of
the machine, that it lacerates as well as binds, the
difficulty is more real. But it is a principle in the
study of history to suspend judgment both of the
meaning and of the value of a policy until the chain
of sequences it sets in motion should be worked out
to its last fulfilment. When the full tale of the
Struggle for Life is told, when the record of its vic
tories is closed, when the balance of its gains and
losses has been struck, and especially when it is
proved that there actually have been losses, it will be
time to pass judgment on its moral value. Of course
this principle cuts both ways; it warns off a favorable
as well as an unfavorable verdict on the beneficence of
the system of things. But Evolution is a study in
history, and its results are largely known. And it
would be affectation to deny that on the whole these
results are good, and appear the worthier the more we

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 203

penetrate into their inner meaning. Men forget when
they denounce the Struggle for Life, that it is to be
judged not only on the ground of sentiment but of
reason, that not its local or surface effects only, but
its permanent influence on the order of the world,
must be taken into account,

Even on the lower ranges of Nature the unfavorable
implications of the Struggle for Life have probably
been exaggerated. While it is essential to an under
standing of the course of evolution, to retain in the
imagination a vivid sense of the Struggle itself, we
must beware of over-coloring the representation, or
flooding it with accompaniments of emotion borrowed
from our own sensations. The word Struggle at all
in this connection is little more than a metaphor.
When it is said that an animal struggles, all that is
really meant is that it lives. An animal, that is to
say, does not, in addition to all its other activities,
have to employ a vast number of special activities, to
the exercise of which the term Struggle is to be
applied. It is Life itself which is the Struggle: and
the whole Life, and the whole of the activities and
powers which make up life are involved in it. To
speak of Struggle in the sense of some special and
separate struggle, to conceive of battle, or even a
series of battles, is misleading, where all is struggle
and where all is battle. Especially must we beware
of reading into it our personal ideas with regard to
accompaniments of pain. The probabilities are that
the Struggle for Life in the lower creation is, to say
the least, less painful than it looks. Whether we
regard the dulness of the states of consciousness
among lower animals, or the fact that the condition

204 THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.

of danger must become habitual, or that death when
it comes is sudden, and unaccompanied by that an
ticipation which gives it its chief dread to Man, we
must assume that whatever the Struggle for Life
subjectively means to the lower animals, it can never
approach in terror what it means to us. And as to
putting any moral content into it, until a late stage
in the world's development, that is not to be thought
of. Judged of even by later standards there is much
to relieve one's first unfavorable impression. With
exceptions, the fight is a fair fight. As a rule there is
no hate in it, but only Hunger. It is seldom pro
longed, and seldom wanton. As to the manner of
death, it is generally sudden. As to the fact of
death, all animals must die. As to the meaning of an
existence prematurely closed, it is better to be to be
eaten than not to be at all. And, as to the last
result, it is better to be eaten out of the world
and, dying, help another to live, than pollute the
world by lingering decay. The most, after all, that
can be done with life is to give it to others. Till
Nature taught her creatures of their own free will to
offer the sacrifice, is it strange that she took it by
force ?

There are those indeed who frown upon Science
for predicating a Struggle for Life in Nature at all,
lest the facts should impugn the beneficence of the
universe. But Science did not invent the Struggle
for Life. It is there. What Science has really done
is to show not only its meaning but its great moral
purpose. There are others, again, like Mill, who, see
ing the facts, but not seeing that moral purpose,
impugn natural theology for still believing in the

THE STRUGGLE FOE LIFE. 205

beneficence of that purpose. Neither attitude, prob
ably, is quite worthy of the names with which these
conclusions are associated. Much more reasonable are
the verdicts of the two men who are first responsible
for bringing the facts before the world, Mr. Alfred
Russel Wallace and Mr. Darwin. " When we reflect,"
says Mr. Darwin, " on this struggle, we may console
ourselves with the full belief that the war of nature
is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is
generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy,
and the happy survive and multiply." And in much
stronger language Mr. Wallace : " On the whole, the
popular idea of the struggle for existence entailing
misery and pain on the animal world is the very
reverse of the truth. What it really brings about
is the maximum of life and of the enjoyment of life,
with the minimum of suffering and pain. Given the
necessity of death and reproduction, and without
these there could have been no progressive develop
ment of the organic world— and it is difficult even to
imagine a system by which a greater balance of
happiness could have been secured." 1

We may safely leave Nature here to look after
her own ethic. That a price, a price in pain, and
assuredly sometimes a very terrible price, has been
paid for the evolution of the world, after all is said, is
certain. There may be difference of opinion as to the
amount of this price, but on one point there can be no
dispute— that even at the highest estimate the thing
which was bought with it was none too dear. For
that thing was nothing less than the present progress
of the world. The Struggle for Life has been a vic-
1 Darwinism, pp. :30-40.

206 THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.

torious struggle ; it has succeeded in its stupendous
task ; and there is nothing of order or beauty or per
fection in living Nature that does not owe something
to its having been carried on. The first duty of those
who demur to the cost of progress is to make sure
that they comprehend in all its richness the infinity of
tha gift this sacrifice has purchased for humanity.
The end of the Struggle for Life is not battle ; it is
not even victory, it is evolution. The result is riot
wounds, it is health. Nature is a vast and com
plicated system of devices to keep things changing,
adjusting, and, as it seems, progressing. The
Struggle for Life is a species of necessitated aspira-
tion, the vis a^terfjo which keeps living things in
mf)tion. It does not follow, of course, that that
motion should be upward; that is dependent on other
considerations. But the point to mark is that without
the struggle for food and the pressure of want, with
out the conflict with foes and the challenge of climate,
the world would be left to stagnation. Change,
adventure, temptation, vicissitude even to the verge
of calamity, these are the life of the world.

There is another side to this principle from which
its higher significance becomes still more apparent.
It follows from the Struggle for Life that those ani
mals which struggle most successfully will prosper,

while the less successful will disappear hence the

well-known principle of Natural Selection or the Sur-
Waiving the discussion of this

law in general, and the varying meanings which " fit
ness" assumes as we rise in the scale of being, observe
the role it plays in Nature. The object of the Sur
vival of the Fittest is to produce fitness. And it does

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 207

so both negatively and positively. In the first place
it produces fitness by killing off the unfit. Without
the rigorous weeding out of the imperfect the progress
of the world had not been possible. If fit and unfit in
discriminately had been allowed to live and reproduce
their kind, every improvement which any individual
mio-ht acquire would be degraded to the common level
in the course of a few generations. Progress can only
start by one or two individuals shooting ahead of then-
species ; and their life-gain can only be conserved by
their being shut off from their species— or by their
species being shut off from them. Unless shut off
from their species their acquisition will either be neu
tralized in the course of time by the swamping effect
of inter-breeding with the common herd, or so diluted
as to involve no real advance. The only chance for
Evolution, then, is either to carry off these improved
editions into " physiological isolation," or to remove
the unimproved editions by wholesale death,
first of these alternatives is only occasionally possible ;
the second always. Hence the death of the unevolved,
or of the unadapted in reference to some new and
higher relation with environment, is essential to the
perpetuation of a useful variation. Although Natural
Selection by no means invariably works in the direc
tion of progress,— in parasites it has consummated al
most utter degeneration,— no progress can take place
without it. It is only when one considers the work
ing of the Struggle for Life on the large scale, and
realizes its necessity to the Evolution of the world as
a whole, that one can even begin to discuss its ethical
or teleological meanings. To make a fit world, the
unfit at every stage must be made to disappear ; and

208 THE STRUGGLE FOB LIFE.

if any self-acting law can bring this about, though its
bearing upon this or that individual case may seem
unjust, its necessity for the world as a whole is vindi
cated. If more of any given species are born into the
world than can possibly find food, and if a given num
ber must die, that number must be singled out upon
some principle ; and we cannot quarrel with the
principle in Physical Nature which condemns to death
the worst. By placing the death-penalty upon the
slightest short-coming, Natural Selection so discour
ages imperfection as practically to eliminate it from
the world. The fact that any given animal is alive
at all is almost a token of its perfectness. Nothing
living can be wholly a failure. For the moment that
it fails, it ceases to live. Something more fit, were it
even by a hairbreadth, secures it place ; so that all
existing lives must, with reference to their environ
ment, be the best possible lives. Natural Selection is
the means employed in Nature to bring about perfect
health, perfect wholeness, perfect adaptation, and in
the long run the Ascent of all living things.

This being so, the Law of the Struggle for Life is
elevated to a unique place in Nature as a first neces
sity of progress. It involves that every living thing
in nature shall live its best, that every resource shall
be called out to its utmost, that every individual
faculty shall be kept in the most perfect order and
work up to its fullest strength. So far from being a
drag on life, it is the one thing which not only makes
life go on at all, but which in the very act perfects it.
The result may sometimes involve the dethroning of a
species, or its entire extinction : it may lead in the
case of others to degeneration; but in the end it must

THE STRUGGLE FOE LIFE. 209

result in the gradual perfecting of organisms upon the
whole, and the steady advance of the final type. In
fixing the eye on the murderous side of this Struggle,
it is therefore well to remember to what it leads.
There could be no higher end in the universe than to
make a perfect world, and no more perfect law than
that which at the same moment eliminates the unfit
and establishes the fit. Too frequently the moralist's
attention is diverted to the negative side, to what
seems the quite immoral spectacle of the massacre of
the innocent, the rout and murder of the unfit. But
in earlier Nature there is no such word as innocent;
and no ethical meaning at that stage can attach itself
to the term " unfit." Fitness in the stormy days of
the world's animal youth was necessarily fighting-
fitness ; no higher end was present anywhere than
simply to gain for life a footing in the world, and per
fect it up to the highest physical form. The creature
which did that fulfilled its destiny, and no higher
destiny was possible or conceivable. The Survival of
the Fittest, of course, does not mean the survival of
the strongest. It means the Survival of the Adapted
— the survival of the most fitted to the circumstances
which surround it. A fish survives in water when a
leaking ironclad goes to the bottom, not because it is
stronger but because it is better adapted to the ele
ment in which it lives. A Texas bull is stronger than
a mosquito, but in an autumn drought the bull dies,
the mosquito lives. Fitness to survive is simply fit-
tedness, and has nothing to do with strength or cour
age, or intelligence or cunning as such, but only with
adjustments as fit or unfit to the world around. A
prize-fighter is stronger than a cripple ; but in the

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.

environment of modern life the cripple is cared for by
the people, is judged fit to live by a moral world,
while the pugilist, handicapped by his very health,
has to conduct his own struggle for existence. Physi
cal fitness here is actually a disqualification ; what
was once unfitness is now fitness to survive. As we
rise in the scale, the physical fitness of the early world
changes to fitness of a different quality, and this law
becomes the guardian of a moral order. In one era
the race is to the swift, in another the meek inherit
the earth. In a material world social survival de
pends on wealth, health, power ; in a moral world the
fittest are the weak, the pitiable, the poor. Thus
there comes a time when this very law, in securing
survival for those who would otherwise sink and fall,
is the minister of moral ends.

When we pass from the animal and the savage
states to watch the working of the Struggle for Life
in later times, the impression deepens that after all,
the " gladiatorial theory " of existence has much to
say for itself. To trace its progress further is denied
us for the present, but observe before we close what
it connotes in modern life. Its lineal descendants are
two in number, and they have but to be named to
show the enormous place this factor has been given
to play in the world's destiny. The first is War, the
second is Industry. These in all their forms and
ramifications are simply the primitive Struggle con
tinued on the social and political plane. War is not a
casual thing like a thunderstorm, nor a specific thing
like a battle. It is that ancient Struggle for Life car
ried over from the animal kingdom, which, in the later
as in the earlier world, has been so perfect an instru-

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 211

ment of evolution. Along with Industry, and for a
time before it, War was the foster-mother of civiliza
tion. The patron of the heroic virtues, the purifier of
societies, the solidifier of states, the military form of
this Struggle — despite the awful balance on the other
side — stands out on every page of history as the
maker and educator of the human race. Industry is
but the same Struggle in another disguise. The in
dustrial conflict of to-day is the old attempt of primi
tive Man to get the most out of Nature — to grow
foods, to find clothes, to raise fuel, to gain wealth.
Owing to the ever-increasing number of the Strug-
glers the supplies fall short of the demands, with the
result of perpetuating on the industrial plane, and
often in hard and degrading forms, the primitive
Struggle for Life. When society wonders at its
labor troubles it forgets that Industry is a stage but
one or two removes from the purely animal Struggle.*
And when morality impugns the Struggle for Life, it]
forgets that nearly the whole later fabric of civiliza-
•tion is its creation.

But one has only to look at these further phases
of the Struggle to observe the most important fact
of all — the change that passes over the principle as
time goes on. Examine it on the higher levels as
carefully as we have examined it on the lower, and
though the crueler elements persist with fatal and
appalling vigor, there are whole regions, and daily
enlarging regions, where every animal feature is dis
credited, discouraged, or driven away. Already, with
the social tragedy still at its height around us, the
amelioration in many directions makes constant prog
ress ; and partly through the rise of opposing forces,

212 THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.

and partly through the very civilization which it has
helped to create, the maligner power must disappear.
The Struggle for Life, as life's dynamic, can never
wholly cease. In the keenness of its energies, the
splendor of its stimulus, its bracing effect on char
acter, its wholesome tensions throughout the whole
range of action, it must remain with us to the end.
But in the virulence of its animal qualities it must
surely pass away. There are those who, without
reflecting on this qualitative change, Avould govern
Society hy the merely animal Struggle ; those who
claim for this the sanction of Nature, and lay down
the principle of selfishness as the eternally working
law. The eternal law, as we shall presently see,
is unselfishness. But even the selfishness of early
Nature loses its sting with time ; the self that is in it
becomes a higher self ; and the world in which it acts
is so much a better world that if self gave full rein to
the animal it would be instantly extinguished.

The amelioration of the Struggle for Life is the
most certain prophecy of Science. If this universe
is a moral universe, it was a necessity that sooner or
later this conflict should abate, that in the course of
Evolution this particular change should come, that
there should be put into the very machinery of Nature
that which should bring it about. And what do we
find? We find the Animal side of the Struggle for
Life attacked in such directions, and with such
weapons that its defeat is sure. These weapons are in
the armory of Nature ; they have been there from the
beginning ; and they are now engaged upon the enemy
so hotly and so openly that we can discover what
some of them are. The first is one which has begun

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 213

to mine the Struggle for Life at its roots. Essen
tially, as we have seen, the Struggle for Life is the
attempt to solve the fundamental problem of all life
— Nutrition. If that could be solved apart from the
Struggle for Life, its occupation would be gone. Now,
it is more than probable that that problem will be
otherwise solved. It will be solved by science. At
the present moment Chemistry is devoting itself to
the experiment of manufacturing nutrition, and with
an enthusiasm which only immediate hope begets. It
is not the visionaries who have dared to prophesy
here. In a hundred laboratories the problem is being
practically worked out, and, as one of the highest
authorities assures us, " The time is not far distant
when the artificial preparation of articles of food will
be accomplished."1 Already, through the labors of
other sciences, the Struggle for Food has been made
infinitely easier than it was ; but when the immediate
quest succeeds, and the food of Man is made direct
from the elements, the Struggle in all its coarser
forms will practically be abolished. Civilization can
not ease the whole burden at once; the Struggle for
Life will go on, but it will be the Struggle with its
fangs drawn.

But there is a higher hope than Science. Attacked
from below by Man's intellect, the final blow will be
struck from a deeper source. It is impossible to con
ceive that the Ascent of Man should always depend
upon his appetites, that in God's world there should
be nothing better to attract him than food and rai
ment, that he should take no single step towards a
higher life except when driven to it. As there comes
f. Remsen, M'Clure'ts Magazine, Jan., 1894.

214 THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.

a time in a child's life when coercion gives place to
free and conscious choice, the day comes to the world
when the aspirations of the spirit begin to compete
with, to neutralize, and to supplant the compulsions
of the body. Against that day in the heart of human-
ity, Nature had made full provision. For there, pre
pared by a profounder chemistry than that which was
to relieve the strain on the physical side, had gathered
through the ages a force in whose presence the ener
gies of the Animal Struggle are as naught. Beside
the Struggle for the Life of Others the Struggle for
Life is but a passing phase. As old, as deeply sunk in
Nature, this further force was destined from the first
to replace the Struggle for Life, and to build a nobler
superstructure on the foundations which it laid. To
establish these foundations was all that the Animal
Struggle was ever designed to do. It has laid them
well; yet it is only when the Struggle for Life stands
projected against the larger influence with which all
through history — and in an infinitely profound sense
through moral history — it has been allied, that at once
its worth and its ignominy are seeu.

CHAPTER VII.

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

WE now open a wholly new, and by far the most
important, chapter in the Evolution of Man. Up to
this time we have found for him a Body, and the rudi
ments of Mind. But Man is not a Body, nor a Mind.
The temple still awaits its final tenant — the higher
human Soul.

With a Body alone, Man is an animal : the highest
animal, yet a pure animal ; struggling for its own nar
row life, living for its small and sordid ends. Add a
Mind to that and the advance is infinite. The Strug
gle for Life assumes the august form of a struggle for
light : he who was once a savage, pursuing the arts of
the chase, realizes Aristotle's ideal man, " a hunter
after Truth." Yet this is not the end. Experience
tells us that Man's true life is neither lived in the
material tracts of the body, nor in the higher altitudes
of the intellect, but in the warm world of the affec
tions. Till he is equipped with these Man is not hu
man. He reaches his full height only when Love be
comes to him the breath of life, the energy of will, the
summit of desire. There at last lies all happiness,
and goodness, and truth and divinity :

215

210 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

" For the loving worm within its clod
Were diviner than a loveless God."

That Love did not come down to us through the
Struggle for Life, the only great factor in Evolution
which up to this time has been dwelt upon, is self-evi
dent. It has a lineage all its own. Yet inexplicable
though the circumstance be, the history of this force,
the most stupendous the world has ever known, has
scarcely even begun to be investigated. Every other
principle in Nature has had a thousand prophets ; but
this supreme dynamic has run its course through the
ages unobserved ; its rise, so far as science is con
cerned, is unknown ; its story lias never been told.
But if any phenomenon or principle in Nature is capa
ble of treatment under the category of Evolution, this
is. Love is not a late arrival, an after-thought, with
Creation. It is not a novelty of a romantic civiliza
tion. It is riot a pious word of religion. Its roots be
gan to grow with tne first cell of life which budded on
this earth. How great it is, the history of humanity
bears witness : but how old it is and how solid, how
bound up with the very constitution of the world,
how from the first of time an eternal part of it, we are
only now beginning to perceive. For the Evolution of
Love is a piece of pure Science. Love did not descend
out of the clouds like rain or snow. It was distilled
on earth. And few of the romances which in after
years were to cluster round this immortal word are
more wonderful than the story of its birth and
growth. Partly a product of crushed lives and exter
minated species, and partly of the choicest blossoms
and sweetest essences that ever came from the tree of
life, it reached its spiritual perfection after a history

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 1>17

the most strange and checkered that the pages of
Nature have to record. What Love was at first, how
crude and sour and embryonic a thing, it is impossible
to conceive. But from age to age, witb immeasurable
faith and patience, by cultivations continuously re
peated, by transplantings endlessly varied, the un
recognizable germ of this new fruit was husbanded to
its maturity, and became the tree on which humanity,
society, and civilization were ultimately borne.

As the story of Evolution is usually told, Love— the
evolved form, as we shall see, of the Struggle for the
Life of Others — has not even a place. Almost the
whole emphasis of science has fallen upon the oppo
site—the animal Struggle for Life. Hunger was early
seen by the naturalists to be the first and most impe
rious appetite of all living things, and the course of
Nature came to be erroneously interpreted in terms of
a never-ending strife. Since there are vastly more
creatures born than can ever survive, since for every
morsel of food provided a hundred claimants appear,
life to an animal was described to us as one long
tragedy ; and Poetry, borrowing the imperfect creed,
pictured Nature only as a blood-red fang. Before we
can go on to trace the higher progress of Love itself, it
is necessary to correct this misconception. And no
•words can be thrown away if they serve, in whatever
imperfect measure, to restore to honor what is in
reality the supreme factor in the Evolution of the
world. To interpret the whole course of Nature by
the Struggle for Life is as absurd as if one were to
define the character of St. Erancis by the tempers of
his childhood. Worlds grow up as well as infants;
their tempers change, the better nature opens out,

218 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHER A.

new objects of desire appear, higher activities are
added to the lower. The first chapter or two of the
story of Evolution may be headed the Struggle for
Life ; but take the book as a whole and it is not a tale
of battle. It is a Love-story.

The circumstances, as has been already pointed out
in the Introduction, under which the world at large
received its main impression of Evolution, obscured
these later and happier features. The modern revival
of the Evolution theory occurred almost solely in
connection with investigations in the lower planes of
Nature, and was due to the stimulus of the pure
naturalists, notably of Mr. Darwin. But what Mr.
Darwin primarily undertook to explain was simply
the Origin of Species. His work was a study in in
fancies, in rudiments ; he emphasized the earliest
forces and the humblest phases of the world's develop
ment. The Struggle for Life was there the most con
spicuous fact — at least, on the surface ; it formed the
key-note of his teaching ; and the tragic side of Nature
fixed itself in the popular mind. The mistake the
world made was twofold: it mistook Darwinism for
Evolution — a specific theory of Evolution applicable
to a single department, for a universal scheme ; and
it misunderstood Mr. Darwin himself. That the
foundations of Darwinism — or what was taken for
Darwinism — were the foundations of all Nature was
assumed. Dazzled with the apparent solidity of this
foundation, men made haste to run up a structure
which included the whole vast range of life — vegetal,
animal, social — based on a law which explained but
half the facts, and was only relevant, in the crude
form in which it was universally stated, for the child-

THE KTUUGdLE FOR THE LIFE OF OT1IE11S. '219

hood of the world. It was impossible for such an
edifice to stand. Natural history cannot in any case
cover the whole facts of human history, and, so inter
preted, can only fatally distort them. The mistake
had been largely qualified had Mr. Darwin's followers
even accepted his foundation in its first integrity;
but, perhaps because the author of the theory himself
but dimly apprehended the complement of his thesis,
few seem to have perceived that anything was amiss.
Mr. Darwin's sagacity led him distinctly to foresee that
narrow interpretations of his great phrase " Struggle
for Existence " were certain to be made ; and in the
opening chapters of the Origin of Species, he warns
us that the term must be applied in its "large and
metaphorical sense, including dependence of one being
on another, and including (which is more important)
not only the life of the individual, but success in leav
ing progeny." l In spite of this warning, his over
mastering emphasis on the individual Struggle for
Existence seems to have obscured, if not to his own
mind, certainly to almost ail his followers, the truth
that any other great factor in Evolution existed.

The truth is there are two Struggles for Life in
every living thing — the Struggle for Life, and the
Struggle for the Life of Others. The web of life is
woven upon a double set of threads, the second thread
distinct in color from the first, and giving a totally
different pattern to the finished fabric. As the whole
aspect of the after-world depends on this distinction
of strands in the warp, it is necessary to grasp the
distinction with the utmost clearness. Already, in
the introductory chapter, the nature of the distinction
1 Origin of Species, 6th edition, p. 50.

2'20 THE XTliUWSLE FOli T11K LIFE OF OTHERS.

has baen briefly explained. But it is necessary to be
explicit here, even to redundancy. We have arrived
at a point from which the Ascent of Man takes a fresh
departure, a point from which the course of Evolution
begins to wear an entirely altered aspect. No such
consummation ever before occurred in the progress of
the world as the rise to potency in human life of the
Struggle for the Life of Others. The Struggle for the
Life of Others is the physiological name for the
greatest word of ethics — Other-ism, Altruism, Love.
From Self-ism to Other-ism is the supreme transition
of history. It is therefore impossible to lodge in the
mind with too much solidity the simple biological fact
on which the Altruistic Struggle rests. Were this a
late phase of Evolution, or a factor applicable to single
genera, it would still be of supreme importance; but
it is radical, universal, involved in the very nature of
life itself. As matter is to be interpreted by Science
in terms of its properties, life is to be interpreted in
terms of its functions. And when we dissect down to
that form of matter with which all life is associated,
we find it already discharging in the humblest organ
isms visible by the microscope the function on which
the stupendous superstructure of Altruism indirectly
comes to rest. Take the tiniest protoplasmic cell,
immerse it in a suitable medium, and presently it will
perform two great acts — the two which sum up life,
which constitute the eternal distinction between the
living and the dead — Nutrition and Reproduction.
At one moment, in pursuance of the Struggle for Life,
it will call in matter from without, and assimilate it
to itself ; at another moment, in pursuance of the
Struggle for the Life of Others, it will set a portion of

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 221

that matter apart, add to it, and finally give it away
to form another life. Even at its dawn life is receiver
and giver ; even in protoplasm is Self-ism and Other-
ism. These two tendencies are not fortuitous. They
have been lived into existence. They are not grafts
on the tree of life, they are its nature, its essential
life. They are not painted on the canvas, but woven
through it.

The two main activities, then, of all living things are
Nutrition and Reproduction. The discharge of these
functions in plants, and largely in animals, sums up
the work of life. The object of Nutrition is to secure
the life of the individual ; the object of Reproduction
is to secure the life of the Species. These two objects
are thus wholly different. The first has a purely per
sonal end ; its attention is turned inwards ; it exists
only for the present. The second in a greater or less
degree is impersonal; its attention is turned out
wards ; it lives for the future. One of these objects,
in other words, is Self-regarding ; the other is Other-
regarding. Both, of course, at the outset are wholly
selfish ; both are parts of the Struggle lor Life. Yet
see already in this non-ethical region a parting of the
ways. Selfishness and unselfishness are two supreme
words in the moral life. The first, even in physical
Nature, is accompanied by the second. In the very
fact that one of the two mainsprings of life is Other-
regarding there lies a prophecy, a suggestion, of the
day of Altruism. In organizing the physiological
mechanism of Reproduction in plants and animals
Nature was already laying wires on which, one far-off
day, the currents of all higher things might travel.
In itself, this second struggle, this effort to main-

222 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

tain the life of the species, is not less real than the
first ; the provisions for effecting it are not less won
derful ; the whole is not less a part of the system of
things. And, taken prophetically, the function of
Reproduction is as much greater than the function of
Nutrition as the Man is greater than the Animal, as
the Soul is higher than the Body, as Co-operation is
stronger than Competition, as Love is stronger than
Hate. If it were ever to be charged against Nature
that she was wholly selfish, here is the refutation
at the very start. One of the two fundamental activ
ities of all life, whether plant or animal,, is Other-re
garding. It is not said that the function of Repro
duction, say in a fern or in an oak, is an unselfish act,
yet in a sense, even though begotten of self, it is an
other-regarding act. In the physical world, to speak
of the Struggle for Food as selfish, or to call the Strug
gle for Species unselfish, are alike incongruous. But
if the morality of Nature is impugned on the ground
of the universal Struggle for Life, it is at least as rel
evant to refute the charge by putting moral content
into the universal Struggle for Species. No true
moral content can be put into either, yet the one
marks the beginning of Egoism, the other of Altruism.
Almost the whole self-seeking side of things has come
down the line of the individual Struggle for Life; al
most the whole unselfish side of tilings is rooted in' the
Struggle to preserve the life of others.

That an Other-regarding principle should sooner or
later appear on the world's stage was a necessity if
the world was ever to become a moral world. And as
everything in the moral world has what may be called
a physical basis to begin with, it is not surprising to

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 223

find in the mere physiological process of Reproduction
a physical forecast of the higher relations, or, more
accurately, to find the higher relations manifesting
themselves at first through physical relations. The
Struggle for the Life of Others formed an indispen
sable stepping-stone to the development of the Other-
regarding virtues. Nature always works with long
roots. To conduct Other-ism upward into the higher
sphere without miscarriage, and to establish it there
forever, Nature had to embed it in the most ancient
past, so organizing and endowing protoplasm that life
could not go on without it, and compelling its contin
uous activity by the sternest physiological necessity.

To say that there is a certain protest of the mind
against associating the highest ethical ends with forces
in their first stage almost physical, is to confess a
truth which all must feel. Even Ilaeckel, in contrast
ing the tiny rootlet of sex -attraction between two
microscopic cells with the mighty after-efflorescence ot
love in the history of mankind, is staggered at the
audacity of the thought, and pauses in the heart ot
a profound scientific investigation to reflect upon it.
After a panegyric in which he says, " We glorify love
AS the source of the most splendid creations of art ; of
the noblest productions of poetry, of plastic art, and of
music; we reverence in it the most powertul factor in
human civilization, the basis of family life, and, conse
quently, of the development of the state ; " . . . he
adds, "So wonderful is love, and so immeasurably
important is its influence on mental life, that in this
point, more than in any other, ' supernatural ' causa
tion seems to mock every natural explanation." It is
the mystery of Nature, that between the loftiest

224 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

spiritual heights, and the lowliest physical depths,
there should seem to run a pathway which the intel
lect of Man may climb. Haeckel has spoken, and
rightly, from the stand-point of humanity ; yet lie con
tinues, and with equal right, from the stand-point of
the naturalist. " Notwithstanding all this, the com
parative history of evolution leads us back very clearly
and indubitably to the oldest and simplest source of
love, to tiie elective affinity of two differing cells." l

SELF-SACRIFICE IN NATURE.

It is not, however, in Haeckel's "elective affinity
of differing cells" that we must seek the physical
basis of Altruism. That may be the physical basis
of a passion which is frequently miscalled Love ; but
Love itself, in its true sense as Self-sacrifice, Love
with all its beautiful elements of sympathy, tender
ness, pity, and compassion, has come down a wholly
different line. It is well to be clear about this at
once, for the function of Reproduction suggests to the
biological mind a view of this factor which would
limit its action to a sphere which in reality forms
but the merest segment of the whole. The Struggle
for the Life of Others has certainly connected with it
sex-relations, as we shall see ; but we can only use
it scientifically in its broad physiological sense, as
literally a Struggling for Others, a giving up self for
Others. And these others are not Other-sexes. They
have nothing to do with sex. They are the fruits of
.Reproduction — the egg, the seed, the nestling, the
little child. So far from its chief manifestation being
1 Hacckel, Evolution of M«v, Vol. ir.. p. 304.

THE STRUGGLE FOB THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 225

within the sphere of sex it is in the care and nurt
ure of the young, in the provision everywhere
throughout Nature for the seed and egg, in the
endless and infinite self-sacrifices of Maternity, that
Altruism finds its main expression.

That this is the true reading of the work of this
second factor appears even in the opening act of
Reproduction in the lowest plant or animal. Pledged
by the first law of its being — the law of self-pres
ervation — to sustain itself, the organism is at the
same moment pledged by the second law to give up
itself. Watch one of the humblest unicellular
organisms at the time of Reproduction. The cell,
when it grows to be a certain size, divides itself into
two, and each part sets up an independent life. Why
it does so is now known. The protoplasm inside the
cell — the body as it were — needs continually to draw
in fresh food. This is secured by a process of
imbibition or osmosis through the surrounding wall.
But as the cell grows large, there is not wall enough
to pass in all the food the far interior needs, for while
the bulk increases as the cube of the diameter, the
surface increases only as the square. The bulk of the
cell, in short, has outrun the absorbing surface ; its
hunger has outgrown its satisfactions ; and unless the
cell can devise some way of gaining more surface it
must starve. Hence the splitting into two smaller
cells. There is now more absorbing surface than the
two had when combined. When the two smaller cells
have grown as large as the original parent, income
and expenditure will once more balance. As growth
continues, the waste begins to exceed the power of
repair and the life of the cell is again threatened,
15

226 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

The alternatives are obvious. It must divide, or die.
If it divides, what has saved its life ! Self-sacrifice.
By giving up its life as an individual, it has brought
forth two individuals and these will one day repeat
the surrender. Here, with differences appropriate to
their distinctive spheres, is the first great act of the
moral life. All life, in the beginning, is self-con
tained, self-centred, imprisoned in a single cell. The
first step to a more abundant life is to get rid of this
limitation. And the first act of the prisoner is simply
to break the walls of its cell. The plant does this by
a mechanical or physiological process ; the moral
being by a conscious act which means at once the
breaking-up of Self-ism and the recovery of a larger
self in Altruism. Biologically, Reproduction begins
as rupture. It is the release of the cell, full-fed, yet
unsatiated, from itself. " Except a corn of wheat fall
into the ground and die, it abideth alone ; but if it
die, it bringeth forth much fruit."

These facts are not colored to suit a purpose.
There is no other language in which science itself can
state them. " Reproduction begins as rupture. Large
cells beginning to die, save their lives by sacrifice.
Reproduction is literally a life-saving against the
approach of death. Whether it be the almost random
rupture of one of the more primitive forms such as
Schizogenes, or the overflow and separation of multiple
buds as in Arcella, or the dissolution of a few of the
Infusorians, an organism, which is becoming ex
hausted, saves itself and multiplies in reproducing." *
There is no Reproduction in plant, animal, or Man
which does not involve self-sacrifice. All that is
1 The Evolution of Sex, page 232.

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. £27

moral, and social, and other-regarding has come along
the line of this function. Sacrifice, moreover, as these
physiological facts disclose, is not an accident, nor
an accompaniment of Reproduction, but an inevitable
part of it. It is the universal law and the universal
condition of life. The act of fertilization is the
anabolic restoration, renewal, and rejuvenescence of
a katabolic cell : it is a resurrection of the dead
brought about by a sacrifice of the living, a dying of
part of life in order to further life.

Pass from the unicellular plant to one of the higher
phanerogams, and the self-sacrificing function is seen
at work with still greater definiteness, for there we
have a clearer contrast with the other function. To
the physiologist a tree is not simply a tree, but a com
plicated piece of apparatus for discharging, in the first
place, the function of Nutrition. Root, trunk, branch,
twig, leaf, are so many organs — mouths, lungs, cir
culatory-system, alimentary canal — for carrying on to
the utmost perfection the Struggle for Life. But this
is not all. There is another piece of apparatus within
this apparatus of a wholly different order. It has
nothing to do with Nutrition. It has nothing to do
with the Struggle for Life. It is the flower. The
more its parts are studied, in spite of all homol-
ogies, it becomes more clear that this is a construc
tion of a unique and wonderful character. So im
portant has this extra apparatus seemed to science,
that it has named the great division of the vegetable
kingdom to which this and all higher plants belong,
the Phanerogams — the flowering plants ; and it
recognizes the complexity and physiological value of
this reproductive specialty by giving them the place

228 THE STRUGGLE FOll THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

of honor at the top of the vegetable creation. Watch
this flower at work for a little, and behold *a miracle.
Instead of struggling for life it lays down its life.
After clothing itself with a beauty which is itself the
minister of unselfishness, it droops, it wastes, it lays
down its life. The tree still lives ; the other leaves
are fresh and green ; but this life within a life is
dead. And why? Because within this death is life.
Search among the withered petals, and there, in a
cradle of cunning workmanship, are a hidden pro
geny of clustering seeds — the gift to the future which
this dying mother has brought into the world at the
cost of leaving it The food she might have lived
upon is given to her children, stored round each tiny
embryo with lavish care, so that when they waken
into the world the first helplessness of their hunger
is met. All the arrangements in plant-life which
concern the flower, the fruit, and the seed are the
creations of the Struggle for the Life of Others.

No one, though science is supposed to rob all the
poetry from Nature, reverences a flower like the
biologist. He sees in its bloom the blush of the young
mother ; in its fading, the eternal sacrifice of Mater
nity. A yellow primrose is not to him a yellow prim
rose. It is an exquisite and complex structure added
on to the primrose plant for the purpose of producing
other primrose plants. At the base of the flower,
packed in a delicate casket, lie a number of small
white objects no larger than butterflies' eggs. These
are the eggs of the primrose. Into this casket, by a
secret opening, filmy tubes from the pollen grains —
now enticed from their hiding-place on the stamens
and clustered on the stigma — enter and pour their

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 229

fertilizing fovilla through a microscopic gateway which
opens in the wull of the egg and leads to its inmost
heart. Mysterious changes then proceed. The em
bryo of a future primrose is horn. Covered with
•many protective coats, it becomes a seed. The orig
inal casket swells, hardens, is transformed into a
rounded capsule opening by valves or a deftly con
structed hinge. One da}7" this capsule, crowded with
seeds, breaks open and completes the cycle of Repro
duction by dispersing them over the ground. There,
by and bye, they will burst their enveloping coats,
protrude their tiny radicles, and repeat the cycle of
their parents' sacrificial life.

With endless variations in detail, these are the
closing acts in the Struggle for the Life of Others in
the vegetable world. We have illustrated the point
from plants, because this is the lowest region where
biological processes can be seen in action, and it is
essential to establish beyond dispute the fundamental
nature of the reproductive function. From this level
onwards it might be possible to trace its influence,
and growing influence, throughout the whole range of
the animal kingdom until it culminates in its most
consummate expression — a human mother. Some of
the links in this unbroken ascent will be filled in at
a later stage — for the Evolution of Maternity is so
wonderful and so intricate as to deserve a treatment
of its own — but meantime we must pass on to notice
a few of the other gifts which Reproduction has be
stowed upon the world. In a rigid sense, it is im
possible to separate the gains to humanity from the
Reproductive function as distinguished from those
of the Nutritive. They are co-operators, not compet-

230 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

itors, and their apparently rival paths continuously
intertwine. But mark a few of the things that have
mainly grown up around this second function and
decide whether or not it be a worthy ally of the
Struggle for Life in the Evolution of Man.

To begin at the most remote circumference, con
sider what the world owes to-day to the Struggle for
the Life of Others in the world of plants. This is the
humblest sphere in which it can offer any gifts at all,
yet these are already of such a magnitude that with
out them the higher world would not only be inex
pressibly the poorer, but could not continue to exist.
As we have just seen, all the arrangements in plant
life which concern the flower are the creations of the
Struggle for the Life of Others. For Reproduction
alone the flower is created ; when the process is over
it returns to the dust. This miracle of beauty is a
miracle of Love. Its splendor of color, its variega
tions, its form, its symmetry, its perfume, its honey,
its very texture, are all notes of Love — Love-calls or
Love-lures or Love-provisions for the insect world,
whose aid is needed to carry the pollen from anther
to stigma, and perfect the development of its young.
Yet this is but a thing thrown in, in giving something
else. The Flower, botanically, is the herald of the
Fruit. The Fruit, botanically, is the cradle of the
Seed. Consider how great these further achievements
are, how large a place in the world's history is filled
by these two humble things — the Fruits and Seeds of
plants. Without them the Struggle for Life itself
would almost cease. The animal Struggle for Life is
a struggle for what ? For Fruits and Seeds. All an
imals in the long run depend for food upon Fruits

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

and Seeds, or upon lesser creatures which have util.
ized Fruits and Seeds. Three-fourths of the popu-
liition of the world at the present moment subsist
upon rice. What is rice? It is a seed; a product of
Reproduction. Of the other fourth, three-fourths
live upon grains — barley, wheat, oats, millet. What
are these grains? Seeds— stores of starch or albumen
which, in the perfect forethought of Reproduction,
plants bequeath to their offspring. The foods of the
world, especially the children's foods, are the foods
of the children of plants, the foods which unselfish
activities store round the cradles of the helpless, so
that when the sun wakens them to their new world
they may not want. Every plant in the world lives
for Others. It sets aside something, something costly,
cared for, the highest expression of its nature. The
Seed is the tithe of Love, the tithe which Nature
renders to Man. When Man lives upon Seeds he
lives upon Love. Literally, scientifically, Love is Life.
If the Struggle for Life has made Man, braced and
disciplined him, it is the Struggle foi Love that sus
tains him.

Pass from the foods of Man to drinks, and the gifts
of Reproduction once more all but exhaust the list.
This may be mere coincidence, but a coincidence
which involves both food and drink is at least worth
noting. The first and universal food of the world is
milk, a product of Reproduction. All distilled spirits
are products of Reproduction. All malted liquors are
made from the embryos of plants. All wines are
juices of the grape. Even on the plane of the animal
appetites, in mere relation to Man's hunger and his
thirst, the factor of Reproduction is thus seen to be

232 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

fundamental. To interpret the course of Evolution
without this would be to leave the richest side even
of material Nature without an explanation. Retrace
the ground even thus hastily travelled over, and see
how full Creation is of meaning, of anticipation, of
good for Man, how far back begins the undertone of
Love. Remember that nearly all the beauty of the
world is Love-beauty — the corolla of the flower and
the plume of the grass, the lamp of the fire-fly, the
plumage of the bird, the horn of the stag, the face of
a woman ; that nearly all the music of the natural
world is Love-music — the song of the nightingale, the
call of the mammal, the chorus of the insect, the
serenade of the lover ; that nearly all the foods of the
world are Love-foods— the date and the raisin, the
banana and the bread-fruit, the locust and the honey,
the eggs, the grains, the seeds, the cereals, and the
legumes ; that all the drinks of the world are Love-
drinks — the juices of the sprouting grain and the
withered hop, the milk from the udder of the cow,
the wine from the Love-cup of the vine. Remember
that the Family, the crown of all higher life, is the
creation of Love ; that Co-operation, which means
power, which means wealth, which means leisure,
which therefore means art and culture, recreation and
education, is the gift of Love. Remember not only
these things, but the diffusions of feeling which ac
company them, the elevations, the ideals, the happi
ness, the goodness, and the faith in more goodness,
and ask if it is not a world of Love in which we livo.

CO-OPERATION IN NATURE.
Though Co-operation is not exclusively the gift of

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 233

Reproduction, it is so closely related to it that we
may next observe a few of the fruits of this most
definitely altruistic principle. For here is a principle,
not merely a series of interesting phenomena, pro
foundly rooted in Nature and having for its imme
diate purpose the establishment of Other-ism. In
innumerable cases, doubtless, Co-operation has been
induced rather by the action of the Struggle for Life—
a striking circumstance in itself, as showing how the
very selfish side of life has had to pay its debt to the
larger law — but in multitudes more it is directly allied
with the Struggle for the Life of Others.

For illustrations of the principle in general we may
begin with the very dawn of life. Every life at first
was a single cell. Co-operation was unknown. Each
cell was self-contained and self-sufficient, and as new
cells budded from the parent they moved away and
set up life for themselves. This self-sufficiency
leads to nothing in Evolution. Unicellular organ
isms may be multiplied to infinity, but the vegetable
kingdom can never rise in height, or symmetry, or
productiveness without some radical change. But
soon we find the co-operative principle beginning its
mysterious integrating work. Two, three, four, eight,
ten cells club together and form a small mat, or
cylinder, or ribbon — the humblest forms of corporate
plant-life — in which each individual cell divides the
responsibilities and the gains of living with the rest.
The colony succeeds ; grows larger ; its co-operations
become more close and varied. Division of labor in
new directions arises for the common good ; leaves
are organized for nutrition, and special cells for re
production. All the organs increase in specialization;

234 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS

and the time arrives when from cryptogams the plant-
world bursts into flowers. A flower is organized for
Co-operation. It is not an individual entity, but a
commune, a most complex social system. Sepal,
petal, stamen, anther, each has its separate rdle in the
economy, each necessary to the other and to the life of
the species as a whole. Mutual aid having reached
this stage can never be arrested short of the extinction
of plant-life itself.

Even after this stage, so triumphant is the success
of the Co-operative Principle, that having exhausted
the possibilities of further development within the
vegetable kingdom, it overflowed these boundaries and
carried the activities of flowers into regions which
the plant- world never invaded before. With a novelty
and audacity unique in organic Nature, the higher
flowering plants, stimulated by Co-operation, opened
communication with two apparently forever unrelated
worlds, and established alliances which secured from
the subjects of these distant states, a perpetual and
vital service. The history of these relations forms the
most entrancing chapter in botanical science. But
so powerfully has this illustration of the principle
appealed already to the popular imagination, that it
becomes a mere form to restate it. What interests
us anew in these novel enterprises, nevertheless, is
that they are directly connected with the Repro
ductive Struggle. For it is not for food that the
plant-world voyages into foreign spheres, but to perfect
the supremer labor of its life.

The vegetable world is a world of still life. No
higher plant has the power to move to help its neigh
bor, or even to help itself, at the most critical

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 235

moment of its life. And it is through this very help
lessness that these new Co-operations are called forth.
The fertilizing pollen grows on one part of the flower,
the stigma which is to receive it grows on another, or it
may be on a different plant. But as these parts can
not move towards one another, the flower calls in the
aid of moving things. Unconscious of their vicarious
service, the butterfly and the bee, as they flit from
flower to flower, or the wind as it blows across the
fields, carry the fertilizing dust to the waiting stigma,
and complete that act without which in a generation
the species would become extinct. No flower in the
world, at least no entomophilous flower, can contin
uously develop healthy offspring without the Co-oper
ations of an insect ; and multitudes of flowers without
such aid could never seed at all. It is to these Co
operations that we owe all that is beautiful and
fragrant in the flower-world. To attract the insect
and recompense it for its trouble, a banquet of honey
is spread in the heart of the flower ; and to enable the
visitor to find the nectar, the leaves of the flower are
made showy or conspicuous beyond all other leaves.
To meet the case ot insects which love the dusk, many
flowers are colored white ; for those which move
about at night and cannot see at all, the night-flowers
load the darkness with their sweet perfume. The
loveliness, the variegations of shade and tint, the
ornamentations, the scents, the shapes, the sizes of
flowers, are all the gifts of Co-operation. The flower
in every detail, in fact, is a monument to the Co-oper
ative Principle.

Scarcely less singular are the Co-operations among
flowers themselves the better to attract the attention

236 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

of the insect world. Many flowers are so small and
inconspicuous that insects might not condescend to
notice them. But Altruism is always inventive. In
stead, of dispersing their tiny florets over the plant,
these club together at single points, so that hy the
multitude of numbers an imposing show is made.
Each of the associating flowers in these cases pre
serves its individuality, and — as we see in the Elder or
the Hemlock — continues to grow on its own flower
stalk. But in still more ingenious species the part
ners to a floral advertisement sacrifice their separate
stems and cluster close together on a common head.
The Thistle, for example, is not one flower, but a
colony of flowers, each complete in all its parts, but
all gaining the advantage of conspicuousness by dense
ly packing themselves together. In the Sun-flowers
and many others the sacrifice is carried still further.
Of the multitude of florets clustered together to form
the mass of color, a few cease the development of the
reproductive organs altogether, and allow their whole
strength to go towards adding visibility to the mass.
The florets in the centre of the group, packed close
together, are unable to do anything in this direction ;
but those on the margin expand the perianth into a
blazing circle of flame, and leave the deep work of
Reproduction to those within. What are the advan
tages gained by all this mutual aid ? That it makes
them the fittest to survive. These Co-operative
Plants are among the most numerous, most vigorous,
and most widely diffused in Nature. Self-sacrifice
and Co-operation are thus recognized as sound in
principle. The blessing of Nature falls upon them.
The words themselves, in any more than a merely

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 237

physical sense, are hopelessly out of court in any
scientific interpretation of things. But the point to
mark is that on the mechanical equivalent of what
afterwards come to have ethical relations Natural Se
lection places a premium. Non-co-operative or feebly
co-operative organisms go to the wall. Those which
give mutual aid survive and people the world with
their kind. Without pausing to note the intricate
Co-operations of flowers which reward the eye of
the specialist—the subtle alliance with Space in
Dioecious flowers ; with Time in Dichogamous species,
and with Size in the Dimorphic and Trimorphic forms

consider for a moment the extension of the principle

to the Seed and Fruit. Helpless, singlehanded, as is a
higher plant, with regard to the efficient fertilizing of
its flowers, an almost more difficult problem awaits it
when it comes to the dispersal of its seeds. If each
seed fell where it grew, the spread of the species
would shortly be at an end. But Nature, working on
the principle of Co-operation, is once more redundant
in its provisions. By a series of new alliances the
offspring are given a start on distant and unoccupied
ground ; and so perfect are the arrangements in this
department of the Struggle for the Life of Others that
single plants, immovably rooted in the soil, are yet
able to distribute their children over the world. By a
hundred devices the fruits and seeds when ripe are
entrusted to outside hands— provided with wing or
parachute and launched upon the wind, attached by
cunning contrivances to bird and beast, or dropped
into stream and wave and ocean-current, and so trans
ported over the earth.

If we turn to the Animal Kingdom, the Principle of

238 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

Co-operation everywhere once more confronts us. It
is singular that, with few exceptions, science should
still know so little of the daily life of even the com-
mon animals. A few favorite mammals, some birds,
three or four of the more picturesque and clever of the
insects — these almost exhaust the list of those whose
ways are thoroughly known. But, looking broadly at
Nature, one general fact is striking — the more social
animals are in overwhelming preponderance over the
unsocial. Mr. Darwin's dictum, that " those commu
nities which included the greatest number of the most
sympathetic members would nourish best," is wholly
proved. Run over the names of the commoner or
more dominant mammals, and it will be found that
they are those which have at least a measure of socia
bility. The cat-tribe excepted, nearly all live together
in herds or troops— the elephant, for instance, the
buffalo, deer, antelope, wild-goat, sheep, wolf, jackal,
reindeer, hippopotamus, zebra, hyena, and seal.
These are mammals, observe — an association of socia
bility in its highest developments with reproductive
specialization. Cases undoubtedly exist where the
sociability may not be referable primarily to this func
tion ; but in most the chief Co-operations are centred
in Love, So advantageous are all forms of mutual
service that the question may be fairly asked whether
after all Co-operation and Sympathy — at first instinc
tive, afterwards reasoned — are not the greatest fact*
even in organic Nature ? To quote the words ot
Prince Kropotkin : "As soon as we study animals —
not in laboratories and museums only, but in the for
est and the prairie, in the steppes and the mountains
— we at once perceive that though there is an im-

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 239

mense amount of warfare and extermination going on
amidst various species, and especially amidst various
classes of animals, there is, at the same time, as much,
or perhaps more, of mutual support, mutual aid, and
mutual defence, amidst animals belonging to the same
species or, at least, to the same society. Sociability is
as much a law of Nature as mutual struggle. . . .
If we resort to an indirect test and ask Nature ' Who
are the fittest : those who are continually at war with
each other, or those who support one another ? ' we at
once see that those animals which acquire habits of
mutual aid are undoubtedly the fittest. They have
more chances to survive, and they attain, in their re
spective classes, the highest development of intelli
gence and bodily organization. If the numberless
facts which can be brought forward to support this
view are taken into account, we may safely say that
mutual aid is as much a law of animal life as mutual
struggle ; but that, as a factor of evolution, it most
probably has a far greater importance, inasmuch as it
favors the development of such habits and character
as insure the maintenance and further development of
the species, together with the greatest amount of wel
fare and enjoyment of life for the individual, with the
least waste of energy." 1

In the large economy of Nature, almost more than
within these specific regions, the inter-dependence of
part with part is unalterably established. The sys
tem of things, from top to bottom, is an uninterrupted
series of reciprocities. Kingdom corresponds with
kingdom, organic with inorganic. Thus, to carry on
the larger agriculture of Nature, myriads of living
a Nineteenth Century, 1890, p. 340.

240 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

creatures have to be retained in the earth itself — in
the earth — and to prepare and renew the soils in
which the otherwise exhausted ground may keep up
her continuous gifts of vegetation. Ages before Man
appeared with his tools of husbandry, these agricultur
ists of Nature — in humid countries the Worm, in sub
tropical regions the White Ant — ploughed and har
rowed the earth, so that without the Co-operations of
these most lowly forms of life, the higher beauty and
fruitfulness of the world had been impossible. The
very existence of animal life, to take another case of
broad economy, is possible only through the media
tion of the plant. No animal has the power to satisfy
one single impulse of hunger without the Co-operation
of the vegetable world. It is one of the mysteries of
organic chemistry that the Chlorophyll contained in
the green parts of plants, alone among substances, has
the power to break up the mineral kingdom and
utilize the products as food. Though detected re
cently in the tissues of two of the very lowest ani
mals, Chlorophyll is the peculiar possession of the
vegetable kingdom, and forms the solitary point of
contact between Man and all higher animals and their
supply of food. Every grain of matter therefore eaten
by Man, every movement of the body, every stroke of
work done by muscle or brain, depends upon the con
tribution of a plant, or of an animal which has eaten
a plant. Remove the vegetable kingdom, or interrupt
the flow of its unconscious benefactions, and the whole
higher life of the world ends. Everything, indeed,
came into being because of something else, and con
tinues to be because of its relations to something else.
The matter of the earth is built up of co-operating

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 241

atoms ; it owes its existence, its motion, and its stabil
ity to co-operating stars. Plants and animals are
made of co-operating cells, nations of co-operating
men. Nature makes no move, Society achieves no
end, the Cosmos advances not one step, that is not de
pendent on Co-operation ; and while the discords of
the world disappear with growing knowledge, Science
only reveals with increasing clearness the universality
of its reciprocities.

But to return to the more direct effects of Re
production. After creating Others there lay before
Evolution a not less necessary task — the task of
uniting them together. To create units in indef
inite quantities and scatter them over the world
is not even to take one single step in progress.
Before any higher evolution can take place these
units must by some means be brought into relation
so as not only to act together, but to react upon
each other. According to well-known biological
laws, it is only in combinations, whether of atoms,
cells, animals, or human beings, that individual
units can make any progress, and to create such
combinations is in every case the first condition
of development. Hence the first commandment
of Evolution everywhere is " Thou shalt mass,
segregate, combine, grow large." Organic Evo
lution, as Mr. Herbert Spencer tells us, " is prima
rily the formation of an aggregate." No doubt the
necessities of the Struggle for Life tended in many
ways to fulfil this condition, and the organization
of primitive societies, both animal and human, are
largely its creation. Under its influence these were
called together for mutual protection and mutual help;
16

242 THE STRUGGLE FOE THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

and Co-operations induced in this way have played an
important part in Evolution. But the Co-operations
brought about by Reproduction are at once more
radical, more universal, and more efficient. The
Struggle for Life is in part a disruptive force. The
Struggle for the Life of Others is wholly a social
force. The social efforts of the first are secondary ;
those of the last are primary. And had it not been
for the stronger and unbreakable bond which the
Struggle for the Life of Others introduced into the
world the organization of Societies had never even
been begun. How subtly Reproduction effects its
purpose an illustration will make plain. And we
shall select it again from the lowest world of life, so
that the fundamental nature of this factor may be
once more vindicated on the way.

More than two thousand years ago Herodotus ob
served a remarkable custom in Egypt. At a certain
season of the year, the Egyptians went into the desert,
cut off branches from the wild palms, and, bringing
them back to their gardens, waved them over the
flowers of the date-palm. Why they performed this
ceremony they did not know ; but they knew that if
they neglected it, the date crop would be poor or
wholly lost. Herodotus offers the quaint explanation
that along with these branches there came from the
desert certain flies possessed of a "vivific virtue,"
which somehow lent an exuberant fertility to the
dates. But the true rationale of the incantation is
now explained. Palm-trees, like human beings, are
male and female. The garden plants, the date-
bearers, were females , the desert plants were males ;
and the waving of the branches over the females

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 243

meant the transference of the fertilizing pollen dust
from the one to the other.

Now consider, in this far-away province of the
vegetable kingdom, the strangeness of this phenom
enon. Here are two trees living wholly different
lives, they are separated "by miles of desert sand ;
they are unconscious of one another's existence ; and
yet they are so linked together that their separation
into two is a mere illusion. Physiologically they are
one tree ; they cannot dwell apart. It is nothing to
the point that they are neither dowered with locomo
tion nor the power of conscious choice. The point
is that there is that in Nature which unites these
seemingly disunited things, which effects combina
tions arid co-operations where one would least believe
them possible, which sustains by arrangements of the
most elaborate kind inter-relations between tree and
tree. By a device the most subtle of all that guard
the higher Evolution of the world — the device of Sex
— Nature accomplishes this task of throwing irre
sistible bonds around widely separate things, and
establishing such sympathies between them that
they must act together or forfeit the very life of
their kind. Sex is a paradox; it is that which sepa
rates in order to unite. The same mysterious mesh
which Nature threw over the two separate palms, she
threw over the few and scattered units which were to
form the nucleus of Mankind.

Picture the state of primitive Man ; his fear of
other primitive Men ; his hatred of them ; his un-
sociability ; his isolation ; and think how great a
thing was done by Sex in merely starting the crystal
lization of humanity. At no period, indeed, was Man

244 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

ever utterly alone. There is no such thing in nature
as a man, or for the matter of that as an animal,
except among the very humblest forms. Wherever
there is a higher animal there is another animal ;
wherever there is a savage there is another savage—
the other half of him, a female savage. This much, at
least, Sex has done for the world— it has abolished
the numeral one. Observe, it has not simply discour
aged the existence of one ; it has abolished the exist
ence of one. The solitary animal must die, and can
leave no successor. Unsociableness, therefore, is ban
ished out of the world ; it has become the very con
dition of continued existence that there should always
be a family group, or at least pair. The determi
nation of Nature to lay the foundation stone of corpo
rate national life at this point, and to embed Socia
bility forever in the constitution of humanity, is only
obvious when we reflect with what extraordinary
thoroughness this Evolution of Sex was carried out.
There is no instance in Nature of Division of Labor
being brought to such extreme specialization. The
two sexes were not only set apart to perform different
halves of the same function, but each so entirely lost
the power of performing the whole function that even
with so great a thing at stake as the continuance of
the species one could not discharge it. Association,
combination, mutual help, fellowship, affection— things
on which all material and moral progress would
ultimately turn— were thus forced upon the world
at the bayonet's point.

This hint, that the course of development is taking
a social rather than an individual direction, is of im
mense significance. If that can be brought about by

THE STRUGGLE FOU THE LIFE OF OTIIEHS. 2

the Struggle for the Life of Others— and in the next
chapters we shall see that it has been— there can be
no dispute about the rank of the factor which con
summates it. Along the line of the physiological
function of Reproduction, in association with its in
duced activities and relations, not only has Altruism
entered the world, but along with it the necessary
field for its expansion and full expression. If Nature
is to be read solely in the light of the Struggle for
Life, these ethical anticipations— and as yet we are
but at the beginning of them — for a social world and
a moral life, must remain the stultification both of
science and of teleology.

THE ETHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF SEX.

Next among the gifts of Reproduction fall to be
examined some further contributions yielded by the
new and extraordinary device which a moment ago
leaped into prominence — Sex. The direct, and es
pecially the collateral, issues here are of such signifi
cance that it will be essential to study them in detail.
Realize the novelty and originality of this most highly
specialized creation, and it will be seen at once that
something of exceptional moment must lie behind it.
Here is a phenomenon 'which stands absolutely alone
on the field of Nature. There is not only nothing at
all like it in the world, but while everything else has
homologues or analogues somewhere in the cosmos,
this is without any parallel. Familiarity has so ac
customed us to it that we accept the sex separation
as a matter of course ; but no words can do justice to
the wonder and novelty of this strange line of cleav-

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHER*.

age which cuts down to the very root of being in
everything that lives.

No theme of equal importance has received less
attention than this from evolutionary philosophy.
The single problems which sex suggests have been
investigated with a keenness and brilliance of treat
ment never before brought to bear in this mysterious
region ; and Mr. Darwin's theory of sexual selection,
whether true or false, has called attention to a multi
tude of things in living Nature which seem to find a
possible explanation here. But the broad and simple
fact that this division into maleness and femaleness
should run between almost every two of every plant
and every animal in existence, must have implications
of a quite exceptional kind.

How deep, from the very dawn of life, this rent
between the two sexes yawns is only now beginning
to be seen. Examine one of the humblest water
weeds — the Spirogyra. It consists of waving threads
or necklaces of cells, each plant to the eye the exact
duplicate of the other. Yet externally alike as they
seem, the one has the physiological value of the male,
the other of the female. Though a primitive method
of Reproduction, the process in this case foreshadows
the law of all higher vegetable life. From this point
upwards, though there are many cases where repro
duction is asexual, in nearly every family of plants a
Reproduction by spores takes place, and where it does
not take place its absence is abnormal, and to be
accounted for by degeneration. When we reach the
higher plants the differences of sex become as marked
as among the higher animals. Male and female
flowers grow upon separate trees, or live side by side

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 247

on the same branch, yet so unlike one another in form
and color that the untrained eye would never know
them to be relatives. Even when male and female are
grown on the same flower-stalk and enclosed in a
common perianth, the hermaphroditism is generally
but apparent, owing to the physiological barriers of
heteromorphism and dichogamy. Sex-separation, in
deed, is not only distinct among flowering plants, but
is kept up by a variety of complicated devices, and a
return to hermaphroditism is prevented by the most
elaborate precautions.

When we turn to the animal kingdom again, the
same great contrast arrests us. Half a century ago,
when Balbiani described the male and female elements
in microscopic infusorians, his facts were all but
rejected by science. But further research has placed
it beyond all doubt that the beginnings of sex are
synchronous almost with those shadowings in of life.
From a state marked by a mere varying of the nuclear
elements, a state which might almost be described as
one antecedent to sex, the sex-distinction slowly
gathers definition, and passing through an infinite
variety of forms, and with countless shades of
emphasis, reaches at last the climax of separateness
which is observed among birds and mammals. Often,
even in the Metazoa, this separateness is outwardly
obscured, as in star-fishes and reptiles ; often it is
matter of common observation ; while sometimes it is
carried to such a pitch of specialization that only the
naturalist identifies the two wholly unlike creatures
as male and female. Through the whole wide field
of Nature then this gulf is fixed. Each page of the
million-leaved Book of Species must be as it were split

248 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

in two, the one side for the male, the other for the
female. Classification naturally takes little note of
this distinction ; but it is fundamental. Unliken esses
between like things are more significant than unlike-
nesses of unlike things. And the unlikenesses be
tween male and female are never small, and almost
always great. Though the fundamental difference is
internal the external form varies ; size, color, and a
multitude of more or less striking secondary sexual
characteristics separate the one from the other. Be
sides this, and more important than all, the cycle of a
year's life is never the same for the male as for the
female ; they are destined from the beginning to pur-
sue different paths, to live for different ends.

Now what does all this mean ? To say that the sex-
distinction is necessary to sustain the existence of life
in the world is no answer, since it is at least possible
that life could have been kept up without it. From
the facts of Parthenogenesis, illustrated in bees and
termites, it is now certain that Reproduction can be
effected without fertilization ; and the circumstance
that fertilization is nevertheless the rule, proves
this method of Reproduction, though not a neces
sity, to be in some way beneficial to life. It is
important to notice this absence of necessity for sex
having been created — the absence of any known
necessity— from the merely physiological stand-point.
Is it inconceivable that Nature should sometimes do
things with an ulterior object, an ethical one, for
instance ? To no one with any acquaintance with
Nature's ways will it be possible to conceive of such
a purpose as the sole purpose. In these early days
when sex was instituted it was a physical universe.

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE GF OTHERS. 249

Undoubtedly sex then had physiological advantages ;
but when in a later day the ethical advantages become
visible, and rise to such significance that the higher
world nearly wholly rests upon them, we are entitled,
as viewing the world from that higher level, to have
our own suspicions as to a deeper motive underlying
the physical.

Apart from bare necessity, it is further remarkable
that no very clear advantage of the sex-distinction has
yet been made out by Science. Hensen and Van
Beneden are able to see in conjugation no more than a
Verj&ngung or rejuvenescence of the species. The
living machinery in its wearing activities runs down
and has to be wound up again ; to keep life going some
fresh impulse must be introduced from time to time ;
or the protoplasm, exhausting itself, seeks restoration
in fertilization and starts afresh.1 To Hatschek it is
a remedy against the action of injurious variations;
while to Weismann it is simply the source of varia
tions. " I do not know," says the latter, " what mean
ing can be attributed to sexual reproduction other
than the creation of hereditary individual characters
to form the material on which natural selection may
work. Sexual reproduction is so universal in all
classes of multicellular organisms, and nature deviates
so rarely from it, that it must necessarily be of pre
eminent importance. If it be true that new species
are produced by processes of selection, it follows that
the development of the whole organic world depends
on these processes, and the part that amphigony
has to play in nature, by rendering selection
possible among multicellular organisms, is not only
1 Geddes and Thomson, The Evolution of Sex, p. 163.

250 THE STRUGGLE FOIi THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

important, but of the very highest imaginable impor
tance." 1

These views may be each true ; and probably, in a
measure, are ; but the fact remains that the later
psychical implications of sex are of such transcendent
character as to throw all physical considerations into
the shade. When we turn to these, their significance
is as obvious as in the other case it was obscure.
This will appear if we take even the most dis
tinctively biological of these theories — that of Weis-
mann. Sex, to him, is the great source of variation in
Nature, in plainer English, of the variety of organisms
in the world. Now this variety, though not the main
object of sex, is precisely what it was essential for
Evolution by some means to bring about. The first
work of Evolution always is, as we have seen, to
create a mass of similar things — atoms, cells, men —
and the second is to break up that mass into as many
different kinds of things as possible. Aggregation
masses the raw material, collects the clay for the pot
ter ; differentiation destroys the featureless monotonies
as fast as they are formed, and gives them back in
new and varied forms. Now if Evolution designed,
among other things, to undertake the differentiation of
Mankind, it could not have done it more effectively
than through the device of sex. To the blending, or to
the mosaics, of the different characteristics of father
and mother, and of many previous fathers and
mothers, under the subtle wand of heredity, all the
varied interests of the human world is due. When
one considers the passing on, not so much of minute
details of character and disposition, but of the domi-
1 Biological Memoirs, p. 281.

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 251

nant temperament and type, the new proportion in
which already inextricably mingled tendencies are re
arranged, and the changed environment in which,
with, each new generation, they must unfold ; it is
seen how perfect an instrument for variegating
humanity lies here. Had sex done nothing more than
make an interesting world, the debt of Evolution to
Reproduction had been incalculable.

THE ETHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF MATERNITY.

But let us not be diverted from the main stream by
these secondary results of the sex-distinction. A far
more important implication lies before us. The prob
lem that remains for us to settle is as to how the
merely physical forms of Other-ism began to be
accompanied or overlaid by ethical characters. And
the solution of this problem requires nothing more
than a consideration of the broad and fundamental
fact of sex itself. In what it is, and in what it neces
sarily implies, we shall find the clue to the beginnings
of the social and moral order of the world. For, rising
on the one hand out of maleness and on the other hand
out of femaleness, developments take place of such a
kind as to constitute this the turning-point of the
world's moral history. Let it be said at once that
these developments are not to be sought for in the
direction in which, from the nature of the factors, one
might hastily suppose that they lay. What seems to
be imminent at this stage, and as the natural end to
which all has led up, is the institution of affection in
definite forms between male and female. But we are
on a very different track. Affection between male

25'J THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

and female is a later, less fundamental, and, in its
beginnings, less essential growth ; and long prior to
its existence, and largely the condition of it, is the
even more beautiful development whose progress we
have now to trace. The basis of this new develop
ment is indeed far removed from the mutual relations
of sex with sex. For it lies in maleness and female-
ness themselves, in their inmost quality and essen
tial nature, in what they lead to and what they be
come. The superstructure, certainly, owes much to
the psychical relations of father and mother, husband
and wife, but the Evolution of Love began ages before
these were established

What exactly maleness is, and what femaleness,
has been one of the problems of the world. At least
five hundred theories of their origin are already in the
field, but the solution seems to have baffled every
approach. Sex has remained almost to the present
hour an ultimate mystery of creation, and men seem
to know as little what it is as whence it came. But
among the last words of modern science there are one
or two which spell out a partial clue to both of these
mysterious problems. The method by which this has
been reached is almost for the first time a purely
biological one, and if its inferences are still uncertain,
it has at least established some important facts.

Starting with the function of nutrition as the nearest
filly of Reproduction, the newer experimenters have
discovered cases in which sex apparently has been de
termined by the quantity and quality of the food-sup
ply. And in actual practice it has been found possible,
in the case of certain organisms, to produce either
maleness or femaleness by simply varying their nutri-

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 253

tion— femaleness being an accompaniment of abundant
food, maleness of the reverse. When Yung, to take
an authentic experiment, began his observations on
tadpoles, he ascertained that in the ordinary natural
condition the number of males and females produced
was not far from equal— the percentage being about
57 female to 43 male, thus giving the females a pre
ponderance of seven. But when a brood of tadpoles
was sumptuously fed the percentage of females rose to
78, and when a second brood was treated even more
liberally, the number amounted to 81. In a third
experiment with a still more highly nutritious diet,
the result of the high feeding was more remarkable,
for in this case 92 females were produced and only 8
males. In the case of butterflies and moths, it has
been found that if caterpillars are starved before en
tering the chrysalis state the offspring are males,
while others of the same brood, when highly nourished,
develop into females. A still more instructive case
is that of the aphides, the familiar plant-lice of our
gardens. During the warmth of summer, when food
is abundant, these insects produce parthenogenetically
nothing but females, while in the famines of later
autumn they give birth to males. In striking confir
mation of this fact it has been proved that in a con
servatory where the aphides enjoy perpetual summer,
the parthenogenetic succession of females continued
to go on for four years and stopped only when the
temperature was lowered and food diminished. Then
males were at once produced.1 It will no longer be
said that science is making no progress with this
unique problem when it is apparently able to deter-
1 The Evolution of Sex, pp. 41-46.

254 TUE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

mine sex by turning off or on the steam in a green
house. With regard to bees the relation between
nutrition and sex seems equally established. " The
three kinds of inmates in a bee-hive are known to
every one as queens, workers, and drones ; or, as fertile
females, imperfect females, and males. What are the
factors determining the differences between these three
forms? In the first place, it is believed that the eggs
which give rise to drones are not fertilized, while those
that develop into queens and workers have the normal
history. But what fate rules the destiny of the two
latter, determining whether a given ovum will turn out
the possible mother of a new generation, or remain at
the lower level of a non-fertile working female ? It
seems certain that the fate mainly lies in the quantity
and quality of the food. Royal diet, and plenty of it,
develops the future queens. . . . Up to a certain point
the nurse bees can determine the future destiny of
their charge by changing the diet, and this in some
cases is certainly done. If a larva on the way to be
come a worker receive by chance some crumbs from
the royal superfluity, the reproductive function may
develop, and what are called ' fertile workers,' to a
certain degree above the average abortiveness, result ;
or, by direct intention, a worker grub may be reared
into a queen bee." J

It is unnecessary to prolong the illustration, for the
point it is wished to emphasize is all but in sight. As
we have just witnessed, the tendency of abundant
nutrition is to produce females, while defective nutri
tive conditions produce males. This means that in so
far as nutrition re-acts on the bodies of animals — and
1 TheEvolution of Set, p. 42. See also pp. 41-46.

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 255

nothing does so more — there will be a growing dif
ference, as time begins to accumulate the effects, be
tween the organization and life-habit of male and
female respectively. In the male, destructive processes,
a preponderance of waste over repair, will prevail; the
result will be a katabolic habit of body ; in the female
the constructive processes will be in the ascendant,
occasioning an opposite or anabolic habit. Translated
into less technical language, this means that the pre
dominating note in the male will be energy, motion,
activity ; while passivity, gentleness, repose, will char
acterize the female. These words, let it be noticed,
psychical though they seem, are yet here the coinages
of physiology. No other terms indeed would describe
the difference. Thus Geddes and Thomson : " The
female cochineal insect, laden with reserve-products in
the form of the well-known pigment, spends much of
its life like a mere quiescent gall on the cactus plant.
The male, on the other hand, in his adult state, is
agile, restless, and short-lived. Now this is no mere
curiosity of the entomologist, but in reality a vivid
emblem of what is an average truth throughout the
world of animals — the preponderating passivity of the
females, the freedomness and activity of the males."
Rolph's words, because he writes neither of men nor
of animals, but goes back to the furthest recess of
Nature and characterizes the cell itself, are still more
significant : " The less nutritive and therefore smaller,
hungrier, and more mobile organism is the male ;
the more nutritive and usualty more quiescent is the
female."

Now what do these facts indicate? They indicate
that maleness is one thing and fernaleness another,

256 THE STRUGGLE FOE THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

and that each has been specialized from the beginning
to play a separate role in the drama of life. Among
primitive peoples, as largely in modern times, "The
tasks which demand a powerful development of
muscle and bone, and the resulting capacity for inter
mittent spurts of energy, involving corresponding
periods of rest, fall to the man ; the care of the chil
dren and all the various industries which radiate from
the hearth, and which call for an expenditure of
energy more continuous, but at a lower tension, fall
to the woman." J Whether this or any theory of the
origin of Sex be proved or unproved, the fact remains,
and is everywhere emphasized in Nature, that a cer
tain constitutional difference exists between male and
female, a difference inclining the one to a robuster
life and implanting in the other a certain mysterious
bias in the direction of what one can only call the
womanly disposition.

On one side of the great line of cleavage have grown
up men — those whose lives for generations and gener
ations have been busied with one particular set of
occupations ; on the other side have lived and devel
oped women — those who for generations have been
busied with another and a widely different set of
occupations. And as occupations have inevitable
reactions upon mind, character, and disposition, these
two have slowly become different in mind and char
acter and disposition. That cleavage, therefore, which
began in the merely physical region, is now seen to
extend into the psychical realm, and ends by supply
ing the world with two great and forever separate
types. No efforts, or explanations, or expostulations
1 Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, p. 2.

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 257

can ever break down that distinction between male-
ness and femaleness, or make it possible to believe
that they were not destined from the first of time to
play a different part in human history. Male and
female never have been and never will be the same.
They are different in origin; they have travelled to
their destinations by different routes ; they have had
different ends in view. The result is that they are
different, and the contribution therefore of each to the
evolution of the human race is special and unique.
By and bye it will be our duty to mark what Man, in
virtue of his peculiar gift, has done for the world;
part indeed of his contribution has been already re
corded here. To him has been mainly assigned the
fulfilment of the first great function— the Struggle for
Life. Woman, whose higher contribution has not yet
been named, is the chosen instrument for carrying on
the Struggle for the Life of Others. Man's life, on
the whole, is determined chiefly by the function of
Nutrition ; Woman's by the function of Reproduction.
Man satisfies the one by going out into the world, and
in the rivalries of war and the ardors of the chase, in
conflict with Nature, and amid the stress of industrial
pursuits, fulfilling the law of Self-preservation;
Woman completes her destiny by occupying herself
with the industries and sanctities of the home, and
paying the debt of Motherhood to her race.

Now out of this initial difference — so slight at first
as to amount to no more than a scarcely perceptible
Ijias — have sprung the most momentous issues. For
by every detail of their separate careers the two
original tendencies — to outward activity in the man;
to inward activity, miscalled passivity, in the woman
17

258 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

— became accentuated as time went on. The one life
tended towards selfishness, the other towards unself
ishness. While one kept Individualism alive, the
other kept Altruism alive. Blended in the children,
these two master-principles from this their starting-
point acted and re-acted all through history, seeking
that mean in which true life lies. Thus by a Division
of Labor appointed by the will of Nature, the condi
tions for the Ascent of Man were laid.

But by far the most vital point remains. For we
have next to observe how this bears directly on the
theme we set out to explore — the Evolution of Love.
The passage from mere Other-ism, in the physiological
sense, to Altruism in the moral sense, occurs in con
nection with the due performance of her natural
task by her to whom the Struggle for the Life of
Others is assigned. That task, translated into one
great word, is Maternity — which is nothing but the
Struggle for the Life of Others transfigured, trans
ferred to the moral sphere. Focused in a single
human being, this function, as we rise in history,
slowly begins to be accompanied by those heaven-born
psychical states which transform the fernaleness of
the older order into the Motherhood of the new.
"When one follows Maternity out of the depths of
lower Nature, and beholds it ripening in quality as it
reaches the human sphere, its character, and the char
acter of the processes by which it is evolved, appear
in their full divinity. For of what is Maternity the
mother ? Of children ? No ; for these are the mere
vehicle of its spiritual manifestation. Of affection
between female arid male ? No ; for that, contrary to
accepted beliefs, has little to do in the first instance

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 259

with sex-relations. Of what then ? Of Love itself, of
Love as Love, of Love as Life, of Love as Humanity,
of Love as the pure and unclefiled fountain of all that
is eternal in the world. In the long stillness which
follows the crisis of Maternity, witnessed only by the
new and helpless life which is at once the last expres
sion of the older function and the unconscious vehicle
of the new, Humanity is born. By an alchemy which
remains, and must ever remain, the secret of Nature,
the physiological forces give place to those higher
principles of sympathy, solicitude, and affection which
from this time onwards are to change the course of
Evolution and determine a diviner destiny for a
Human Race :

"Earth's insufficiency
Here grows to event;
The indescribable
Here it is done;
The woman-soul leadeth us
Upward and on." i

So stupendous is this transition that the mere possi
bility staggers us. Separated by the whole diameter
of conscious intelligence and will, what possible affin
ities can exist between the Reproductive and the
Altruistic process? What analogy can ever exist
between the earlier physiological Struggle for the Life
of Others and the later Struggle of Love ? Yet, dif
ferent though their accompaniments may be, when
closely examined they are seen, at every essential
point, running parallel with each other. The object
in either case is to continue the life of the Species ;
1 Faust, Pt. n. Bayard Taylor's tr.

260 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

the essence of both is self-sacrifice ; the first manifest
ation of the sacrifice is to make provision for Others
by helping them to draw the first few breaths of life.
But what has Love to do with Species? Can Altru
ism have reference to mere life ? The answer is, that
in its first beginnings it has almost nothing to do
with anything else. For, consider the situation. Re
production, let us suppose, has done its most perfect
work on the physiological plane : the result is that a
human child is born into the world. But the work of
Reproduction being to Struggle for the Life of the
Species, its task is only complete when it secures that
the child, representing the Species, shall live. If the
child dies, Reproduction has failed; the Species, so
far as this effort is concerned, comes to an end. Now,
can Reproduction as a merely physiological function
complete this process ? It cannot. What can ?
Only the Mother's Care and Love. Without these,
in a few hours or days, the new life must perish ; the
earlier achievement of Reproduction is in vain.
Hence there comes a moment when these two func
tions meet, when they act as complements to each
other ; when Physiology hands over its unfinished
task to Ethics; when Evolution— if for once one may
use a false distinction — depends upon the " moral "
process to complete the work the " cosmic " process
has begun.

At what precise stage of the Ascent, in association
with what class of animals, Other-ism began to shade
into Altruism in the ethical sense, is immaterial.
WThether the Altruism in the early stages is real or
apparent, profound or superficial, voluntary or auto
matic, does not concern us. What concerns us is that

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 261

the Altruism is there ; that the day came when, even
though a rudiment, it was a reality ; above all that
the arrangements for introducing and perfecting it
were realities. The prototype, for ages, may have
extended only to form, to the outward relation; for
further ages no more Altruism may have existed than
was absolutely necessary to the preservation of the
Species. But to fix the eye upon it at that remote
stage and assert that, because it was apparently then
automatic, it must therefore have been automatic ever
after, is to forget the progressive character of Evolu
tion as well as to ignore facts. While many of the
apparent Other-regarding acts among animals are
purely selfish and purely automatic, undoubtedly
there are instances where more is involved. Apart
from their own offspring — in relation to which there
may always be the suspicion of automatism ; and
apart from domestic animals — which are open to the
further suspicion of having been trained to it— ani
mals act spontaneously towards other animals; they
have their playmates ; they make friendships and
very attached friendships. Much more, indeed, has
been claimed for them ; but it is not necessary to
claim even this much "N"o evolutionist would expect
among animals — domestic animals always excepted —
any considerable development of Altruism, because
the physiological and psychical conditions which di
rectly led to its development in Man's case were fulfilled
in no other creature.1

1 The answer to the argument in favor of automatism is thus
summarized by C. M. Williams : "(I) That functions which are
preserved and inherited must evidently be, not only in animals
and plants, but also and equally in man, such as favor the preser-

262 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

Simple as seems the method by which the first few
sparks of Love were nursed into flame in the bosom of
Maternity, the details of the evolution are so intricate
as to require a chapter to themselves. But the
emphasis which Nature puts on this process may be
judged of by the fact that one-half the human race
had to be set apart to sustain and perfect it. To the
evolutionist who discerns the true proportions of the
forces which made for the Ascent of Man, one of the
two or three great events in the natural history of the
world was the institution of sex. It is here that the
master-forces which were to dominate the latest and
highest stages of the process start; here, specialized
into Egoism and Altruism, they part ; and here, each
having run its different course, they meet to distrib
ute their gains to a succeeding race. With the
initial impulses of their sex strengthened by the
different life-routine to which each led, these two
forces ran their course through history, determining
by their ceaseless reactions the order and progress of

vation of the species ; those which do not so favor it must perish
with the individuals or species to which they belong ; (2) that it
cannot, indeed, be assumed that a result which has never come
within the experience of the species can be willed as an end, al
though, with the species, function securing results which, from a
human point of view, might be regarded as such, may be pre
served; but (3) that, as far as we assume the existence of con
sciousness at all in any species or individual, we must assume
pleasure and pain, pleasure in customary function, pain in its
hindrance; and (4) that, as far as we can assume memory, we
may also feel authorized to assume that a remembered action
may be associated with remembered results that come within the
experience of the animal, some phases of which may thus become,
as combined with pleasure or pain, ends to seek or consequences
to avoid."— Evolutional Ethics, p. 386.

THE STRUGGLE FOB THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 263

the world, or when wrongly balanced, its disorder and
decay. According to evolutional philosophy there are
three great marks or necessities of all true develop
ment — Aggregation, or the massing of things ; Differ
entiation, or the varying of things ; and Integration,
or the re-uniting of things into higher wholes. All
these processes are brought about by sex more per
fectly than by any other factor known. From a care
ful study of this one phenomenon, science could
almost decide that Progress was the object of Nature,
and that Altruism was the object of Progress.

This vital relation between Altruism in its early
stages and physiological ends, neither implies that it
is to be limited by these ends nor denned in terms of
them. Everything must begin somewhere. And
there is no aphorism which the labors of Evolution, at
each fresh beginning, have tended more consistently
to endorse than "first that which is natural, then that
which is spiritual." How this great saying also dis
poses of the difficulty, which appears and reappears
with every forward step in Evolution, as to the quali
tative terms in which higher developments are to be
judged, is plain. Because the spiritual to our vision
emerges from the natural, or, to speak more accu
rately, is convoyed upwards by the natural for the
first stretches of its ascent, it is not necessarily con
tained in that natural, nor is it to be defined in terms
of it. What comes "first" is not the criterion of what
comes last. Few things are more forgotten in criti
cism of Evolution than that the nature of a thing is
not dependent on its origin, that one's whole view of
a long, growing, and culminating process is not to be
governed by the first sight the microscope can catch

264 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

of it. The processes of Evolution evolve as well as
the products ; evolve with the products. In the
Environments they help to create, or to make avail
able, they find a field for new creations as well as
further reinforcements for themselves. With the
creation of human children Altruism found an area
for its own expansion such as had never before existed
in the world. In this new soil it grew from more to
more, and reached a potentiality which enabled it to
burst the trammels of physical conditions, and over
flow the world as a moral force. The mere fact that
the first uses of Love were physical shows how per
fectly this process bears the stamp of Evolution. The
later function is seen to relieve the earlier at the
moment when it would break down without it, and
continue the ascent without a pause.

If it be hinted that Nature has succeeded in
continuing the Ascent of Life in Animals without
any reinforcement from psychical principles, the
first answer is that owing to physiological con
ditions this would not have been possible in the case
of Man. But even among animals it is not true that
Reproduction completes its work apart from higher
principles, for even there, there are accompaniments,
continually increasing in definiteness, which at least
represent the instincts and emotions of Man. It is no
doubt true that in animals the affections are less
voluntarily directed than in the case of a human
mother. But in either case they must have been
involuntary at first. It can only have been at a lute
stage in Evolution that Kature could trust even her
highest product to carry on the process by herself.
Before Altruism was strong enough to take its own

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. '265

initiative, necessity had to be laid upon all mothers,
animal and human, to act in the way required. In
part physiological, this necessity was brought about
under the ordinary action of that principle which had
to take charge of everything in Nature until the will of
Man appeared — Natural Selection. A mother who did
not care for her children would have feeble and sickly
children. Their children's children would be feeble
and sickly children. And the day of reckoning would
come when they would be driven off the field by a
hardier, that is a better-mothered, race. Hence the
premium of Nature upon better mothers. Hence the
elimination of all the reproductive failures, of all the
mothers who fell short of completing the process to the
last detail. And hence, by the law of the Survival of
the Fittest, Altruism, which at this stage means good-
motherism, is forced upon the world

This consummation reached, the foundations of the
human world are finished. Nothing foreign remains
to be added. All that need happen henceforth is that
the Struggle for the Life of Others should work out its
destiny. To follow out the gains of Reproduction from
this point would be to write the story of the nations,
the history of civilization, the progress of Social Evolu
tion. The key to all these processes is here. There
is no intelligible account of the world which is not
founded on the realization of the place of this factor
in development. Sociology, practically, can only beat
the air, can make no step forward as a science, until it
recognizes this basis in biology. It is the failure, not
so much to recognize the supremacy of this second
factor, but to see that there is any second factor
at all, that has vitiated almost every attempt to

266 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

construct a symmetrical social philosophy. It has
long, indeed, been perceived that society is an organ
ism, and an organism which has grown by natural
growth like a tree. But the tree to which it is
usually likened is such a tree as never grew on this
earth. For it is a tree without flowers ; a tree with
nothing but stem and leaves ; a tree that performed
the function of Nutrition, and forgot all about Repro
duction. The great unrecognized truth of social
science is that the Social Organism has grown and
flowered and fruited in virtue of the continuous activ
ities and inter-relations of the two co-related functions
of Nutrition and Reproduction, that these two domi
nants being at work it could not but grow, and grow in
the way it has grown. When the dual nature of the
evolving forces is perceived ; when their reactions
upon one another are understood ; when the changed
material with which they have to work from time to
time, the further obstacles confronting them at every
stage, the new Environments which modify their
action as the centuries add their growths and disen
cumber them of their withered leaves, — when all this
is observed, the whole social order falls into line.
From the dawn of life these two forces have acted
together, one continually separating, the other contin
ually uniting ; one continually looking to its own
things, the other to the things of Others. Both are
great in Nature — but " the greatest of these is Love."

CHAPTER VIII

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER.

THE Evolution of a Mother, in spite of its half-
humorous, half-sacrilegious sound, is a serious study
in Biology. Even on its physical side this was the
most stupendous task Evolution ever undertook. It
began when the first bud burst from the first plant-
cell, and was only completed when the last and most
elaborately wrought pinnacle of the temple of Nature
crowned the animal creation.

What was that pinnacle ? There is no more in
structive question in science. For the answer brings
into relief one of the expression-points of Nature — one
of these great teleological notes of which the natural
order is so full, and of which this is by far the most
impressive. Run the eye for a moment up the scale
of animal life. At the bottom are the first animals,
the Protozoa. The Ccelenterata follow, then in mixed
array, the Echinoderms, Worms, and Molluscs. Above
these come the Pisces, then the Amphibia, then the
Reptilia, then the Aves, then— What? The Mam-
malia, THE MOTHERS. There the series stops.
Nature has never made anything since.

Is it too much to say that the one motive of organic

267

268 THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER.

Nature was to make Mothers ? It is at least certain
that this was the chief thing she did. Ask the
Zoologist what, judging from science alone, Nature
aspired to from the first, he could but answer Mam
malia — Mothers. In as real a sense as a factory
is meant to turn out locomotives or clocks, the
machinery of Nature is designed in the last resort to
turn out Mothers. You will find Mothers in lower
nature at every stage of imperfection ; you will
see attempts being made to get at better types ;
you find old ideas abandoned and higher models
coming to the front. And when you get to the
top you find the last great act was but to present to
the world a physiologically perfect type. It is a fact
which no human Mother can regard without awe,
which no man can realize without a new reverence for
woman and a new belief in the higher meaning of
Nature, that the goal of the whole plant and animal
kingdoms seems to have been the creation of a family,
which the very naturalist has had to call Mammalia.

That care for others, from which the Mammalia
take their name, though reaching its highest expres
sion there, is introduced into Nature in cruder forms
almost from the dawn of life. In the vegetable king
dom, from the motherlessness of the early Crypto
gams, we rise to find a first maternity foreshadowed
in the flowering tree. It elaborates a seed or nut or
fruit with infinite precaution, surrounding the embryo
with coat after coat of protective substance, and stor
ing around it the richest foods for its future use.
And rudimentary though the manifestation be, when
we remember that this is not an incident in the tree's
life but its whole blossom and crown, it is impossible

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER. 269

but to think of this solicitude and Motherhood to
gether. So exalted in the tree's life is this provision
for others that the Botanist, like the Zoologist, places
the mothering plants at the top of his department of
Nature. His highest division is the Phanerogams
—named, literally, in terms of their reproductive
specialization.

Crossing into the animal kingdom we observe the
same motherless beginning, the same eared-fur end.
All elementary animals are orphans; they know
neither home nor care ; the earth is their only mother
or the inhospitable sea; they waken to isolation, to
apathy, to the attentions only of those who seek their
doom. But as we draw nearer the apex of the animal
kingdom, the spectacle of a protective Maternity
looms into view. At what precise point it begins it
is difficult to say. But that it does not begin at once,
that there is a long and gradual Evolution of Mater
nity, is clear. From casual observation, and from pop
ular books, it might be inferred that care of offspring

we cannot yet speak of affection — is characteristic

of the whole field of Nature. On the contrary, it is
doubtful whether in the Invertebrate half of Nature it
exists at all. If it does it is very rare ; and in the
Vertebrates it is met with only exceptionally till we
reach the two highest classes. What does exist, and
sometimes in marvellous perfection, is care for eggs ;
but that is a wholly different thing, both in its phys
ical and psychical aspect, from love of oft'spring. The
truth is Nature so made animals in the early days
that they did not need Mothers. The moment they
were born they looked after themselves, and were per
fectly able to look after themselves. Mothers in these

270 THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER.

days would have been a superfluity. All that Nature
worked at at that dawning date was Maternity in a
physical sense — Motherhood came as a later and a
rarer growth. The children of those days were not
really children at all ; they were only offspring,
springers off, deserters from home. At one bound
they were out into life on their own account, and she
who begat them knew them no more. That early
world, therefore, for millions and millions of years was
a bleak and loveless world. It was a world without
children and a world without Mothers. It is good to
realize how heartless Nature was till these arrived.

In the lower reaches of Nature, things remain still
unchanged. The rule is not that the Mother ignores,
but that she never sees her child. The land-crabs of
the West Indies descend from their homes in the
mountains once a year, march in procession to the
sea, commit their eggs to the waves, and come away.
The burying-beetles deposit their fragile capsules in
the dead carcase of a mouse or bird, plant all together
in the earth, and leave them to their fate. Myriads of
other creatures are born into the world, and ordained
so to be born, whose Mothers are dead before they
begin to live. The moment of birth with the Ephem-
eridse is also the moment of death. These are not
cases nevertheless where there has been no care. On
the contrary, there is a solicitude for the egg of the
most extreme kind — for its being placed exactly in
the right spot, at the right time, protected from the
weather, shielded from enemies, and provided with a
first supply of food. The butterfly places the eggs of
its young on the very leaf which the coming cater
pillar likes the most, and on the under side of the leaf

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER. 271

where they will be least exposed — a case which illus
trates in a palpable way the essential difference
between Motherhood and Maternity. Maternity here,
in the restricted sense of merely adequate physical
care, is carried to its utmost perfection. Everything
that can be done for the egg is done. Motherhood,
on the other hand, is non-existent, is even an anatom
ical impossibility. If a butterfly could live till its
egg was hatched — which does not happen — it would
see no butterfly come out of the egg, no airy likeness
of itself, but an earth-bound caterpillar. If it rec
ognized this creature as its child, it could never
play the Mother to it. The anatomical form is so
different that were it starving it could not feed it,
were it threatened it could not save it, nor is it
possible to see any direction in which it could be
of the slightest use to it. It is obvious that Nature
never intended to make a Mother here ; that all that
she desired as yet was to perfect the first maternal
instinct. And the tragedy of the situation is that
on that day when her training to be a true Mother
should begin, she passes out of the world.

But there is another reason, in addition to the pre
cocity of the offspring, why parental care is a drug in
the market in lower Nature. There are such multi
tudes of these creatures that it is scarcely worth
caring for them. The humbler denizens of the world
produce offspring, not by units or tens, but by thou
sands and millions; and with populations so vast,
maternal protection is not required to sustain the ex
istence of the species. It was probably on the whole a
better arrangement to produce a million and let them
take their chance, than to produce one and take special

272 THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER.

trouble with it. It was easier, moreover, a thousand
times easier, for Nature to make a million young than
one Mother. But the ethical effect, if one may use
such a term here, of this early arrangement was nil.
All this saving of Motherly trouble meant for a long
space in Nature complete absence of maternal train
ing. With children of this sort, Motherhood had no
chance. There was no time to love, no opportunity to
love, and no object to love. It was a period of physi
cal installations ; and of psychical installations only as
establishing the first stages of the maternal instinct
—the prenatal care of the egg. This is a necessary
beginning, but it is imperfect j it arrests itself at the
critical point — where care can react upon the Mother.

Now, before Maternal Love can be evolved out of
this first care, before Love can be made a necessity,
and carried past the unhatched egg to the living thing
which is to come out of it, Nature must alter all her
ways. Four great changes at least must be introduced
into her programme. In the first place, she must
cause fewer young to be produced at a birth. In the
second place, she must have these young produced in
such outward form that their Mothers will recognize
them. In the third place, instead of producing them
in such physical perfection that they are able to go
out into life the moment they are born, she must
make them helpless, so that for a time they must
dwell with her if they are to live at all. And fourth
ly, it is required that she shall be made to dwell with
them ; that in some way they also should be made
necessary — physically necessary— to her to compel her
to attend to them. All these beautiful arrangements
we find carried out to the last detail. A mother is

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER. 273

made, as it were, in four processes. She requires, like
the making of a colored picture, four separate paint
ings, each adding some new thing to the effect. Let
us note the way in which woman — savage woman —
became caretaker, and watcher, and nurse, and passed
from femaleness to the higher heights of Mother
hood.

The first great change that had to be introduced
into Nature was the diminishing of the number of
young produced at a birth. As we have seen, nearly
all the lower animals produce scores, or hundreds, or
thousands, or millions, at one time. Now, no mother
can love a million. Clearly, if Nature wishes to make
caretakers, she must moderate her demands. And so
she sets to work to bring down the numbers, reducing
them steadily until so few remain that Motherhood
becomes a possibility. How great this change is can
only be understood when one realizes the almost in
calculable fecundity of the first-created forms of life.
When we examine the progeny of the lowest plants
we find ourselves among figures so high that no mi
croscope can count them. The Protococcus Nivalis
shows its exuberant reproductive power by reddening
the Arctic landscape with its offspring in a single
night. When we break or shake the Puff-ball of the
well-known fungus, the cloud of progeny darkens the
air with a smoke made up of uncountable millions of
spores. Hydatina Senta^ one of the Rotifera, propa
gates four times in thirty-four hours, and in twelve
days is the parent of sixteen million young. Among
fish the number is still very great. The herring and
the cod give birth to a million ova, the frog spawns
eggs by the thousand, and most of the creatures at
18

274 THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER.

and below that level in a like degree. Then comes a
gradual change. When we pass on to the Reptiles,
the figures fall into hundreds. On reaching the birds
the young are to be counted by tens or units. In the
highest of Mammals the rule is one. This bringing
down of the numbers is a remarkable circumstance.
It means the calling in of a diffused care, to focus it
upon one, and concentrate it into Love.

The next thing was to make it possible for the par
ent to recognize its young. If it was difficult to love
a million it was impossible to love an embryo. In the
lower reaches the young are never in the smallest
degree like their parents, and, granting the highest
power of recognition to the Mother, it is impossible
that she should recognize her own offspring. For
generations even Science was imposed upon here, for
many forms of life were described and classified as
distinct species which have turned out to be simply
the young of other species. It may be useless to con
trast so striking a case as the ciliated Planula with
the adult Aurelia — vagaries of form which for gen
erations deceived the naturalist — for it is doubtful
whether creatures of the Medusoid type have eyes ;
but in the higher groups, where power of recognition
is more certain, the unlikeness of progeny to parent is
often as decided. The larval forms of the Star fish,
or the Sea Urchin, or their kinsman the Holothurian
are disguised past all recognition ; and among the
Insects the relation between Butterflies and Moths
and their respective caterpillars is beyond any possible
clue. No doubt there are other modes of recognition
in Nature than those which depend on the sense of
sight. But looked at on every side, the fact remains

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER. 275

that the power to identify their young is all but absent
until the higher animals appear.

The next work of Nature, therefore, was to make
the young resemble the parent, to make, in short, the
children presentable at birth. And the means taken
to effect this are worth noting. Nature always makes
her changes with a marvellous economy, and generally,
as in this case, with a quite startling simplicity. To
start making a new kind of embryo, a plan obvious to
us, was not thought of. That would have been to
have lost all the time spent on them already. If
Nature begins a thing and wishes to make a change,
she never goes back to the beginning and starts de
novo. Her respect for her own work is profound. To
begin at the beginning again would not only be lost
work, but waste of future time ; and Evolution, slow
as it may seem, never fails to take the quickest path.
She did not then start making new embryos. She did
not even touch up the old embryos. All that she did
was to keep them hidden till they grew more present
able. She left them exactly as they were, only she
drew a veil over them. Instead of saying " Let us re
create these little things," she passed the word " Let us
delay them till they are fair to see." And from the
day that word was passed, the embryos were hindered
in the eggs, and the eggs were hindered in the nest,
and the young were hindered in the body, retained in
the dark for weeks and months, so that when first
they caught the Mother's eye they were " strong and
of a good liking."

Though in no case in higher Nature is the young an
exact reproduction of its parent, it will be admitted
that the likeness is very much greater than among

276 THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER.

any of the lower animals. The young of many birds
are at least a colorable imitation of their parents ;
Nature's young geese are at least like enough geese
not to be mistaken for swans ; no dog could be misled
into mistaking— even apart from the sense of smell — a
kitten for a puppy, nor would a hare ever be taken in
by the young of a rabbit. Among domestic animals
like the sheep and cow there is a culmination of
adaptation in this direction, the lamb and the calf
when born being almost fac-sirniles of their Mothers.
But this point need not be dwelt on. It is of insignif
icant importance, and belongs to the surface. The
idea of Nature going out of her way to make better
family likenesses will not stand scrutiny as a final end
in physiology. These illustrations are simply adduced
to confirm the impression that Nature is working not
aimlessly, not even mysteriously, but in a specific
direction ; that somehow the idea of Mothers is in her
mind, and that she is trying to draw closer and closer
the bonds which are to unite the children of men. It
will be enough if we have gathered from this paren
thesis that some time in the remote past, parent and
child came to be introduced to one another ; that the
young when born into the world gradually approached
the parental form, that they no longer " shocked them
by their larval ugliness " ; so that " the first human
mother on record, seeing her first-born son, exclaimed •
1 1 have gotten a Man from the Lord.' " 1

If this second process in the Evolution of Mother
hood is of minor importance, the necessity for the
third will not be doubted. What use is there for per
fecting the power of recognition between parent and

i Mammalian Descent, Prof. W. P. Parker, F. R. S., p. 14.

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTH Elf. 277

child if the latter act like the run of offspring in lower

nature spring off into independent life the moment

they are born ? If the Mother is to be taught to know
her progeny, surely the progeny also must be taught
not to abandon their Mother, And hence Nature had
to set about a somewhat novel task — to teach the
youth of the world the Fifth Commandment. Glance
once more over the Animal series and see how thor
oughly she taught them the lesson. It is sometimes
said that Nature has no imperatives. In reality it is
all imperative. This Commandment was thrust upon
the early world under penalties for disobedience the
most exacting that could be devised—the threat of
death. Pick out a few children and inspect them.
Take one from the bottom of Nature, one from the
middle, and one from the top, and see if any progress
in filial duty is visible as we ascend. The first, — the
young of Aurelia will do, or a ciliated Infusorian, —
representing countless millions like itself, is the
Precocious Child. The moment this embryo is born
it leaves the domestic hearth ; the chances are it has
never seen its parents. If it has it disowns them on
the spot. A better swimmer in many cases— for many
of the parents have forgotten how to swim— it cannot
be overtaken. It ignores its Mother and despises her.
The second is the Good Intentioned Child. This child

a bird, let us say — begins well, stays much at home

in the early days, but plays the prodigal towards the
close. For some weeks it remains quietly in the egg;
for more weeks it remains— not quite so quietly— in
the nest ; and for more weeks still— but with an ob
vious itching to be off — in the neighborhood of the
nest. This, nevertheless, is a good subject. It is

278 THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER.

really a sort of a child, and has really a sort of a
Mother. The third is the Model Child— the Mammal.
In this child, which is only found in the high places of
Nature, infancy reaches its last perfection. Housed,
protected, sumptuously fed, the luxurious children
keep to their Mother's side for months and years, and
only quit the parental roof when their filial education
is complete.

On a casual view of the Examiner's Report on these
various children of Nature the physiologist, as dis
tinguished from the educationalist, might object that
so far from being the subject of congratulation it is a
clear case for censure. If early Nature could turn out
ready-made animals in a single hour, is it not a retro
grade move to have to take so long about it later on ?
When one contrasts the free swimming embryo of a
Medusa, dashing out into its heroic life the moment it
is born, with the helpless kitten or the sightless pup,
is it unfair to ask if Nature has not lost the trick of
making lusty lives ? Is she not trying the new exper
iment at the risk of blundering the old one, and why
cannot she continue the earlier and more brilliant
device of making her children knight-errants from the
first ? Because brilliance is not her object. Her ob
ject is ethical as well as physiological; and though
when we look below the surface a purely physiological
explanation of the riddle will appear, the ethical gain
is not less clear. By curbing them she is educating
them, taming them, rescuing them from a wild and
lawless life. These roving embryos are mere bandits ;
their nature and habits must be changed ; not a
sterner race but a gentler race must be born. New
words must come into the world— Home, Love,

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER. 279

Mother. And these imperceptibly slow drawings to
gether of parent and child are the inevitable prelimi
naries of the domestication of the Human Race. Re
garded from the ethical point of view there are few
things more significant than this reining-in of the
world's rampant youth, this tightening the bonds of
family life, this most gentle introduction of gentleness
into a world cold with motherless children and heart
less with childless mothers.

The personal tie once formed between parent and
offspring could never be undone, and from this
moment onwards must grow from more to more. For
observe what has happened. A generation has grown
up to whom this tie is the necessity of existence.
Every Mammalian child born into the world must
come to be fed, must, for a given number of hours
each day, be in the maternal school, and whether it
like it or not, learn its lessons. No young of any
Mammal can nourish itself. There is that in it there
fore at this stage which compels it to seek its Mother ;
and there is that in the Mother which compels it even
physically— and this is the fourth process, on which
it is needless to dwell— to seek her child. On the
physiological side, the name of this impelling power
is lactation; on the ethical side, it is Love. And
there is no escape henceforth from communion be
tween Mother and child, or only one— death. Break
this new bond and the Mammalia become extinct.
Nature is in earnest here, if anywhere. The training
of Humanity is seen to be under a compulsory educa
tion act. It is in the severity and dread of her penal
ties, coupled with the impossibility of evading the
least of them, that the will of Nature and the serious-

280 THE EVOLUTION OJ A MOTHER.

ness of her purposes are most declared. For the
physiological gains which underlie these ethical rela
tions are all-important. It is largely owing to them
that the Mammalia have taken their place in the van
of the procession of life. Under the earlier system
life had a bad start ; each animal had to push its way
upward single-handed from the egg. It was planted,
so to speak, on the first rung of the ladder, and as the
risks of life are immeasurably great in infancy, it had
all these risks to take. Under the new system it is
launched into the battle already nourished and strong,
and passed scatheless through the first vicissitudes of
youth. In the higher Mammalia, in virtue of the
possession by this group of a placenta in addition to
the ordinary Mammalian characteristics, the young
have a double chance of a successful start. The
development, in fact, of higher forms of life on the
earth has depended on the physical perfecting of
Mothers, and of the physiological ties which bind
them to their young. With the immense structural
advance of the Mammalia, an order of being was in
troduced into Nature whose continuity as an all but
immortal series could never be broken, Thus what
ever moral relations underlie the extraordinary
physical characteristic of this highest class of animals,
there is the added guarantee that they can never be
destroyed.

With the physical programme carried out to the
last detail, the ethical drama opened. An early
result, partly of her sex, and partly of her passive
strain, is the founding through the instrumentality of
the first savage Mother of a new and a beautiful social
state — Domesticity. While Man, restless, eager,

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER. 281

hungry, is a wanderer on the earth, Woman makes a
Home. And though this Home be but a platform of
sticks and leaves, such as the gorilla "builds on a tree,
it becomes the first great school-room of the human
race. For one day there appears in this roofless room
that Avhich is to teach the teachers of the world— a
Little Child.

No greater day ever dawned for Evolution than this
on which the first human child was born. For there
entered then into the world the one thing wanting
to complete the Ascent of Man — a tutor for the
affections. It may be that a Mother teaches a Child,
but in a far deeper sense it is the Child who teaches
the Mother. Millions of millions of Mothers had lived
in the world before this, but the higher affections were
unborn. Tenderness, gentleness, unselfishness, love,
care, self-sacrifice — these as yet were not, or were only
in the bud. Maternity existed in humble forms, but
not yet Motherhood. To create Motherhood and all
that enshrines itself in that holy word required a
human child. The creation of the Mammalia estab
lished two schools in the world — the two oldest and
surest and best equipped schools of Ethics that have
ever been in it — the one for the Child, who must now
at least know its Mother, the other for the Mother,
who must as certainly attend to her Child. The only
thing that remains now is to secure that they shall
both be kept in that school as long as it is possible to
detain them. The next effort of Evolution, therefore

the fifth process as one might call it — is to

lengthen out these school days, and give affection
time to grow.

No animal except Man was permitted to have his

'282 THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER.

education thus prolonged. Many creatures were al
lowed to stay at school for a few days or weeks, but
to one only was given a curriculum complete enough
to accomplish its exalted end. Watch two of the
highest organisms during their earliest youth, and
observe the striking contrast in the time they are made
to remain at their Mother's side. The first is a human
infant ; the second, born, let us suppose, on the same
day, is a baby monkey. In a few days or weeks the
baby monkey is almost able to leave its Mother. Al
ready it can climb, and eat, and chatter like its
parents ; and in a few weeks more the creature is as
independent of them as the winged-seed is of the
parent tree. Meantime, and for many months to come,
its little twin is unable to feed itself, or clothe itself,
or protect itself; it is a mere semi-unconscious chattel,
a sprawling ball of helplessness, the world's one type
of impotence. The body is there in all its parts, bone
for bone and muscle for muscle, like the other. But
somehow this body will not do its work. Something
as yet hangs fire. The body has eyes but they see not,
ears but they hear not, limbs but they walk not. This
body is a failure. Why does the human infant lie like
a log on the forest-bed while its nimble prototype
mocks it from the bough above? Why did that which
is not human step out into life so long before that
which is ?

The question has been answered for us by Mr. John
Fiske, and the world here owes to him one of the most
beautiful contributions ever made to the Evolution of
Man. We know what this delay means ethically— it
was necessary for moral training that the human child
should have the longest possible time by its Mother's

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER. 283

side — but what determines it on the physical side?
The thing that constitutes the difference between the
baby monkey and the baby man is an extra piece of
machinery which the last possesses and the first does
not. It is this which is keeping back the baby man.
What is that piece of machinery ? A brain, a human
brain. The child, nevertheless, is not using it. Why ?
Because it is not quite fitted up. Nature is working
hard at it ; but owing to its intricacy and delicacy the
process requires much time, and till all is ready the
babe must remain a thing. And why does the monkey
brain get ready first ? Because it is an easier machine
to make. And why should it be easier to make?
Because it is only required to do the life-work of an
Animal ; the other has to do the life-work of a Man.
Mental Evolution, in fact, here steps in, and makes an
unexpected contribution to the ethical development of
the world.

An apparatus for controlling one of the lower ani
mals can be turned out from the workshop of Nature
sometimes in a day. The wheels are few, the works
are simple, the connections require little time for ad
justment or correction. Everything that a humble
organism will do has been done a million times by its
parents, and already the faculties have been carefully
instructed by heredity and will automatically repeat
the whole life and movement of their race. But when
a Man is made, it is not an automaton that is made.
This being will do new things, think new thoughts,
originate new ways of life. His immediate ancestors
have done the same, but done some of them so seldom,
and others of them for so short a time, that heredity
has failed to notice them. For half the life, therefore,

284 THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER.

that lies before the human offspring no storage of
habit has been handed down from the past. Each
descendant must carve a way through the world for
itself, and learn to comport itself through all the vary
ing incidents of life as best it can. Now the equip
ment for this is very complex. Into the infant's frame
must be fitted not only the apparatus for automatic
repetition of what its parents have done, but the ap
paratus for intelligent initiation ; not only the machin
ery for carrying on the involuntary and reflex actions —
involuntary and reflex because they have been done
so often by its ancestors as to have become auto
matic — but for the voluntary and self-conscious life
which will do new things, choose fresh alternatives,
seek higher and more varied ends. The instrument
which will attend to breathing even when we forget
it; the apparatus which will make the heart beat even
though we try to stop it ; the self-acting spring which
makes the eyelid close the moment it is threatened—
these and a hundred others are old and well-tried in
ventions which, from ceaseless practice generation
after generation, work perfectly in each new individual
from the start. Nature therefore need waste no time
at this late day on their improvement. But the higher
brain is comparatively a new thing in the world. It
has to undertake a vaster range of duties, often totally
new orders of duties ; it has to do things which its
forerunners had not quite learned to do, or had not
quite learned to do unthinkingly, and the inconceiv
ably complex machinery requires time to settle to its
work. The older brain-processes have been greatly
accelerated even now, and appear in full activity at
an early stage in the infant's life, but the newer and

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER. 285

the higher are in perfect order only after a consider-
able interval of adjustment and elaboration.

Now Infancy, physiologically considered, means the
fitting up of this extra machinery within the brain;
and according to its elaborateness will be the time
required to perfect it. A sailing vessel may put
to sea the moment the rigging is in ; a steamer must
wait for the engines. And the compensation to the
steamer for the longer time in dock is discovered by
and bye in its vastly greater usefulness, its power of
varying its course at will, and in its superior safety in
time of war or storm. For its gveater after-usefulness
also, its more varied career, its safer life, humanity has
to pay tribute to Evolution by a delayed and helpless
Infancy, a prolonged and critical constructive process.
Childhood in its early stage is a series of installations
and trials of the new machinery, a slow experimenting
with powers and faculties so fresh that heredity in
handing them down has been unable to accompany
them with full directions as to their use.

The Brain of Man, to change the figure — if indeed
any figure of that marvellous molecular structure can
be attempted without seriously misleading — is an
elevated table-land of stratified nervous matter, fur
rowed by deep and sinuous canons, and traversed by a
vast net- work of highways along which Thoughts pass
to and fro. The old and often-repeated Thoughts, or
mental processes, pass along beaten tracks ; the newer
Thoughts have less marked footpaths ; the newer still
are compelled to construct fresh Thought-routes for
themselves. Gradually these become established thor
oughfares ; but in the increasing traffic and complexity
of life, new paths in endless multitudes have to be

286 THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER.

added, and bye lanes and loops between the older high
ways must be thrown into the system. The stations
upon these roads from which the travellers set out
are cells ; the roads are transit fibres ; the travellers
themselves are in physiological language nervous dis
charges, in psychological language mental processes.
Each new mental process involves a new redistribu
tion of nervous matter among the cells, a new travel
ling of nervous discharge along one or many of the
transit fibres. Now in every new connection of ideas
multitudes of cells and even multitudes of groups of
cells may be concerned, so that should it happen that
a combination of these precise centres had never been
made before, it is obvious that no routes could pos
sibly exist between them, and these must then and
there be prospected. Each new Thought is therefore
a pioneer, a road-maker, or road-chooser, through the
brain ; and the exhaustless possibilities of continuous
development may be judged from the endlessness of
the possible combinations. In the oldest and most-
used brain there must always remain vast territories
still to be explored, and as it were civilized; and in all
men multitudes of possible connections continue to the
last unrealized. When it is remembered, indeed, that
the brain itself is very large, the largest mass of
nerve-matter in the organic world ; when it is further
realized that each of the cells of which it is built up
measures only one tenth-thousandth of an inch in
diameter, that the transit fibres which connect them
are of altogether unimaginable fineness, the limitless-
ness of the powers of Thought and the inconceivable
complexity of these processes will begin to be under
stood.

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER. 287

Now it is owing to the necessity for having a cer
tain number of the more useful routes established be
fore the babe can be trusted from its Mother's side,
that the delay of Infancy is required. And even after
the child has begun to practise the art of living for
itself, time has still to be granted for many purposes

for new route-making, for becoming familiar with

established thoroughfares, for practising upon obsta
cles and gradients, for learning to perform the jour
neys quickly and without fatigue, for allowing acts re
peated to accelerate and embody themselves as habits.
In the savage-state, where the after-life is simple, the
adjustments are made with comparative ease and
speed ; but as we rise in the scale of civilization the
necessary period of Infancy lengthens step by step,
until in the case of the most highly educated man,
where adjustments must be made to a wide intellect
ual environment, the age of tutelage extends for al
most a quarter of a century.

The use of all this to morals, the reactions espe
cially upon the Mother, are too obvious to dwell
on. Till the brain arrived, everything was too
brief, too rapid for ethical achievements; animals
were in a hurry to be born, children thirsted to
be free. There was no helplessness to pity, no
pain to relieve, no quiet hours, no watching; to
the Mother, no moment of suspense — the most
educative moment of all— when the spark of life in
her little one burned low. Parents could be no use
to their offspring physically, and the offspring could
be no use to their parents psychically. The young
required no Infancy ; the old acquired no Sympathy.
Even among the other Mammalia or the Birds the

288 THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHLE.

Mother's chance was small. There, Infancy extends
to a few day 3 or weeks, yet is but an incident in a life
preoccupied with sterner tasks. A lioness will bleed
for her cub to-day, and in to-morrow's struggle for life
contend with, it to the death. A sheep knows its
lamb only while it is a lamb. The affection in these
cases, lierce enough while it lasts, is soon forgotten,
and the traces it left in the brain are obliterated be
fore they have furrowed into habit. Among the Car-
nivora it is instructive to observe that while the brief
span of infancy admits of the Mother learning a little
Love, the father, for want of even so brief a lesson, re
mains untouched, so wholly untouched indeed that
the Mother has often to hide her offspring from him
lest they be devoured. Love then had no chance till
the Human Mother came. To her alone was given a
curriculum prolonged enough to let her graduate in
the school of the affections. Not for days or weeks,
but for months, as the cry of her infant's helplessness
went forth, she must stand between the flickering
flame and death ; and for years to come, until the bud
ding intellect could take its own command, this Love
dare not grow cold, or pause an hour in its unselfish
ministry.

Begin at the beginning again and recall the fact
of woman's passive strain. A tendency to passivity
means, among other things, a capacity to sit still. Be
it but for a minute or an hour does not matter ; the
point is that the faintest possible capacity is there.
For this is the embryo of Patience and if much and
long nursed a fully fledged Patience will come out of
it. Supply next to this new virtue some definite ob
ject on which to practise, lei us say a child. When

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER. 289

this child is in trouble the Mother will observe the
signs of pain. Its cry will awaken associations, and
in some dull sense the Mother will feel with it. But
"feeling with another" is the literal translation of
the nanie of a second virtue — Sympathy. From feel
ing with it, the parent will sooner or later be led to do
something to help it ; then it will do more things to
help it ; finally it will be always helping it. Now, to
care for things is to become Careful ; to tend things is
to become Tender. Here are four virtues — Patience,
Sympathy, Carefulness, Tenderness — already dawning
upon mankind.

On occasion Sympathy will be called out in unusual
ways. Crises will occur— dangers, famines, sick
nesses. At first the Mother will be unable to meet
these extreme demands — her fund of Sympathy is too
poor. She cannot take any exceptional trouble, or for
get herself, or do anything very heroic. The child,
unable to breast the danger alone, dies. It is well
that this should be so. It is the severity and right
eous justice of Nature — the tragedy of Ivan Ivan-
ovitch anticipated by Evolution. A Mother who has
failed in helpfulness must leave no successor to per
petuate her unworthiness in posterity. Somewhere
else, however, developing along similar lines, there is
another fractionally better Mother. When the emer
gency occurs, she rises to the occasion. For one hour
she transcends herself. That day a cubit is added to
the moral stature of mankind; the first act of Self-
Sacrifice is registered in favor of the human race. It
may or may not be that the child will acquire its
Mother's virtue. But unselfishness has scored; its
child has proved itself fitter to survive than the child
19

290 THE EVOLUTION OF A NOT HER.

of Selfishness. It does not follow that in all circum
stances the nobler will be always victorious : but it
has a great chance. A few score more of centuries,
a few more millions of Mothers, and the germs of
Patience, Carefulness, Tenderness, Sympathy, and
Self-Sacrifice will have rooted themselves in Hu
manity.

See then what the Savage Mother arid her Babe
have brought into the world. When the first Mother
awoke to her first tenderness and wanned her loneli
ness at her infant's love, when for a moment she for
got herself and thought upon its weakness or its pain,
when by the most imperceptible act or sign or look of
sympathy she expressed the unutterable impulse of
her Motherhood, the touch of a new creative hand was
felt upon the world. However short the earliest in
fancies, however feeble the sparks they fanned, how
ever long heredity took to gather fuel enough for a
steady flame, it is certain that once this fire began to
warm the cold hearth of Nature and give human
ity a heart, the most stupendous task of the past was
accomplished. A softened pressure of an uncouth
hand, a human gleam in an almost animal eye, an
endearment in an inarticulate voice — feeble things
enough. Yet in these faint awakenings lay the hope
of the human race. " From of old we have heard the
monition, ' Except ye be as babes ye cannot enter the
kingdom of Heaven'; the latest science now shows

us though in a very different sense of the words—

that unless we had been as babes, the ethical phe
nomena which give all its significance to the phrase
4 Kingdom of Heaven ' would have been non-exist
ent for us. Without the circumstances of Infancy,

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER. 291

we might have become formidable among animals
through sheer force of sharp- wittedness. But except
for these circumstances we should never have com
prehended the meaning of such phrases as ' self-sacri
fice ' or ' devotion.' The phenomena of social life
would have been omitted from the history of the
world, and with them the phenomena of ethics and
religion." J

1 Fiske, Cosmic Philosophy Vol. n., p. 363.

CHAPTER IX.

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER.

IN last chapter we watched the beautiful experi
ment of Nature making Mothers. We saw how the
young produced at one birth were gradually reduced
in numbers until it was possible for affection to con
centrate upon a single object; how that object was
delayed in birth till it was a likeable and presentable
thing ; how it was tied to its mother's side by phys
ical bonds, and hindered there for years to give time
for the Mother's care to ripen into love. We saw,
what was still more instructive, that Nature, when
she had laid the train for perfecting these arrange
ments, gave up making any more animals ; and that
there were physiological reasons why this well-
mothered class should survive beyond all others, and,
by sheer physiological fitness, henceforth dominate
the world.

But there was still a crowning task to accomplish.
The world was now beginning to fill with Mothers,
but there were no Fathers. During all this long
process the Father has not even been named. Noth
ing that has been done has touched or concerned him
almost in the least degree. He has gone his own way

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER. 298

lived outside all these changes ; and while Nature has
succeeded in moulding a human Mother and a human
child, he still wanders in the forest a savage and
unblessed soul.

This time for him, nevertheless, is not lost. In
his own way he is also at school, and learning lessons
which will one day be equally needed by humanity.
The acquisitions of the manly life are as necessary
to human character as the virtues which gather their
sweetness by the cradle ; and these robuster elements
—strength, courage, manliness, endurance, self-reli
ance—could only have been secured away from
domestic cares. Apart from that, it was not neces
sary to put the Father through the same mill as the
Mother. Whatever the Mother gained would be
handed on to her boys as well as to her girls, and
with the law of heredity to square accounts, it was
unnecessary for each of the two great sides of human
ity to make the same investments. By one acquiring
one set of virtues and the other another, the blend in
the end would be the richer; and, without obliter-
ating the eternal individualities of each, the measure
of completeness would be gained more quickly for the
race. Before heredity, however, could do its work
upon the Father a certain basis had to be laid. With
his original habits he would squander the hereditary
gains as fast as he received them, and unless some
change was brought about in his mode of life the old
wild blood in his veins would counteract the gentler
influence, and leave all the Mother's work in vain.
Hence Nature had to set about another long and diffi
cult process — to make the savage Father a reformed
character.

294 THE EVOLU> ION OF A FATHER.

The Evolution of a Father is not so beautiful a pro
cess as the Evolution of a Mother, but it was almost
as formidable a problem to attack. As much de
pended on it, as we shall see, as the training of the
mother; and though it began later it required the
bringing about of one or two changes in Nature as
novel as any that preceded it. When the work was
begun, the Father was in a much worse plight, so far
as training for family life was concerned, than the
Mother. If Maternity was at a feeble level in the
lower reaches of Nature, Paternity was non-existent.
Among a few Invertebrates the male parent took a
passing share in the care of the egg, but it is not until
we are all but at the top that fatherly interest finds
any real expression. Among the Birds, the parents
unite together in most cases to build the nest, the
Father doing the rough work of bringing in moss and
twigs, while the more trusty Mother does the actual
work. When the eggs are laid, the male parent also
takes his turn at incubation ; supplies food and pro
tection ; and lingers round the place of birth to defend
the fledglings to the last. When we leave the Birds,
however, and pass on to the Mammals, the Fathers
are nearly all backsliders. Many are not only indif
ferent to their young, but hostile: and among the
Carnivora the Mothers have frequently to hide their
little ones in case the father eats them.

We have another and a more serious count against
early Fatherhood. If the Love of Father for child
was in this backward state, infinitely more grave was
the condition of things between him and the Mother.
Probably we have all taken it for granted that bus-
bands and wives have always loved one another,

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER. 295

Evolution takes nothing for granted. The affection
between husband and wife is, of all the immeasurable
forms of Love, the most beautiful, the most lasting,
and the most divine ; yet up to this time we have
not been able even to record its existence. The
finished results of Evolution appear so natural to
us, looking back from this late day, that we contin
ually ignore the difficulties it had to meet, and forget
how every single step in progress from the lowest to
the highest had to be carried at the bayonet's point.
The most informed naturalist probably has never
given Nature credit for a thousandth part of the work
she has done, or has succeeded in presenting to his
mind more than a surface outline of the gigantic
series of problems she had to solve. In lower Nature,
as a simple fact, male and female do not love one
another ; and in the lower reaches of Human Nature,
husband and wife do not love one another. Among
exceptional nations, for the last few hours of the
world's history, husbands and wives have truly loved ;
but for the vast mass of Mankind, during the long
ages which preceded historic times, conjugal love was
probably all but unknown.

Now here is a very pretty problem for Evolution.
She has at once to make good Husbands and good
Fathers out of lawless savages. Unless this problem
is solved the higher progress of the world is at an end.
It is the mature opinion of every one who has thought
upon the history of the world, that the thing of
highest importance for all times and to all nations is
Family Life. When the Family was instituted, and
not till then, the higher Evolution of the world was
secured. Hence the exceptional value of the Father's

296 THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER.

development. As the other half of the arch on which
the whole higher world is built, his tinning, his do
mestication, his moral discipline, are vital ; and in the
nature of things this was the next great operation
undertaken by Evolution.

The first step in the transition was to relate him,
definitely and permanently, to the Mother. And here
a formidable initial obstacle had to be encountered.
The apathy and estrangement between husband and
wife in the animal world is radical and universal.
There is almost no such thing there as married life.
Marriage, in anthropology, is not a word for an oc
casion, but for a state; it is not, that is to say, a
wedding, but a dwelling together throughout life of
husband and wife. Now when Man emerged from the
animal creation this institution of conjugal life had
not been arrived at. Marriage like everything else
has been slowly evolved, and until it was evolved,
until they learned to dwell continually together, there
was no chance for mutual love to spring up between
male and female. In Nature the pairing season is
usually but an incident. It lasts only a very short
time, and during the rest of the year, with some ex
ceptions the sexes remain apart. From the investi
gations of Westermarck,— who has lately contributed to
sociology the most masterly account of the Evolu
tion of Marriage we possess— it appears more than
probable that the earliest progenitors of Man had also
a pairing season, and that the young were born at a
particular time of the year, and never at any other
time. All the animals nearest to Man in Nature have

such a season, and there are only a few known the

elephant for instance, and some of the whales— which

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER. 297

have none. Now the brevity of this period in the
father's case most have told against his developing
any real affection. If he is to run away a few days
after the young are born he will miss all the disci
pline of the home, and as this discipline is essential, as
this is the only way in which love can be acquired,
or inherited love developed, some method must be
adopted in his case to extend the period of home life
during which it can act.

Now let us see how this was done. The problem
being to give Love time, the solution was in some way
to alter the circumstances which confined the pairing
season to a specific date— to abolish, in fact, the
pairing season in the case of Man, and lengthen
out the time in which husband and wife should stay
together. And as this was actually the method
adopted, we have first to ask what these special
circumstances were. Why should animals have speci
fic dates at all ? The clue will be found if we examine
carefully what these dates are and the reasons Nature
has had for choosing them. Some wise principle
must underlie this, or it would not be the universal
rule it is. The pairing time with Birds, as every one
knows, occurs in the Spring. With Reptiles this is
also the case ; but among Mammals each species has a
season peculiar to itself, every separate month being
selected by one or other, and invariably adhered to.
" The bat pairs in January and February ; the wild
camel in the desert to the east of Lake Lob-nor, from
the middle of January nearly to the end of February ;
the Canis Azarae and the Indian bison in winter ; the
weasel in March ; the kulan from May to July ; the
musk-ox at the end of August ; the elk, in the Baliic

298 THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER.

Provinces, at the end of August, and, in Asiatic Rus
sia, in September or October ; the wild Yak in Tibet
in. September ; the reindeer in Norway at the end of
September; the badger in October; the Capra pyre-
naica in November ; the chamois, the musk-deer, and
the orongo-antelope in November and December ; the
wolf, from the end of December to the middle of
February." * It might seem that no law governed
these various dates, but their very variety is the proof
of an underlying principle. For these dates show
that each animal in each particular country chooses
that time of the year to give birth to her young when
they will have the best chance of surviving — that is to
say, when the climate is mildest, food most abundant,
and the prospects of life on the whole most favor
able. The dormouse thus brings forth its young in
August, when the nuts begin to ripen ; and the young
deer sees the light just before the first grass shoots
into greenness. Because those born at this season
survived and those born out of it perished, by the
prolonged action of Natural Selection these dates in
time probably became engrained in the species, and
would onlj'- alter with climate itself.

But when Man's Evolution made a certain progress,
and when the Mother's care reached mature perfec
tion, it was no longer imperative for children to be
born only when the sun was shining, and the fruits
grew ripe. The parents could now make provision
for any weather and for any dearth. They could give
their little ones clothes when nights grew cold ; they
could build barns and granaries against times of
famine. In any climate, and at any time, their young
1 Westermarck's History of Human Marriage, p. 26.

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER. 299

were safe ; and the old marriage dates, with their sub
sequent desertions, were struck from the human cal
endar. So arose, or at least was inaugurated, Family
Life, the first and the last nursery of the higher sym
pathies, and the home of all that was afterwards holy
in the world. One could not find a simpler instance
of the growing sovereignty of Mind over the powers
of Nature. So remote a cause as the inclination of
the earth's axis, and the consequent changes of the
seasons, determines the time of Marriage for almost
the whole animal creation, while Man, and a few other
forms of life whose environment is exceptional, are
able to refuse all such dictations. It was when Man's
mind became capable of making its own provisions
against the weather and the crops that the possibility
of Fatherhood, Motherhood, and the Family were re
alized.

The supporters of the hypothesis of promiscuity
have tried to show, what would almost follow from
their theory, that the children in primitive times be
longed rather to the tribe. But it is not likely that
this was the case. The hypothesis of promiscuity
itself, notwithstanding its support from M'Lennan,
Morgan, Lubbock, Bastian, Post and other authorities,
has probably received its deathblow ; and the ancient-
ness of the family as well as of the institution of Mar
riage are both vindicated by later facts. "Every
where," writes Westermarck, " we find the tribes or
clans composed of several families, the members of
each family being more closely connected with one
another than with the rest of the tribe. The Family,
consisting of parents, children, and often also their
next descendants, is a universal institution among ex-

300 THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER.

isting people. And it seems extremely probable that
among our early human ancestors, the Family proved,
if not the Society itself, at least the nucleus of it. I
do not, of course, deny that the tie which bound the
children to the Mother was much more intimate and
more lasting than that which bound them to the
Father; but it seems to me that the only result to
which a critical investigation of facts can lead us is,
that in all probability there has been no stage of
human development where marriage has not existed,
and that the father has always been, as a rule, the
protector of his Family." l

But the process is not yet quite completed. With
the longer time together husband and wife may get
to know and lean upon one another a little, but the
time is still too short for deep affection, and there
remain one or two serious obstacles to remove. In
deed, unless some further steps are taken, this first
achievement must end in failure. As a matter of fact,
it has often ended in failure, and there have been and
still are tribes and nations where love between hus
band and wife is non-existent. Among the Hovas, we
are assured by authorities, the idea of love between
husband and wife is "hardly thought of"; that at
Winnebah " not even the appearance of affection "
exists between them ; that among the Beni-Amer it is
" considered even disgraceful for a wife to show any
affection for her husband"; that the Chittagong Hill
tribes have "no idea of tenderness nor of chivalrous
devotion " ; and that the Eskimo treat their wives
"with great coldness and neglect." The savage
cruelty with which wives are treated by the Aus-
1 Op. cit., pp. 42-50.

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER. 301

tralian aborigines is indicated even in their weapons.
The very names " Servant, Slave," by which the
Brahman address their wives, and the wife's reply,
" Master, Lord," symbolize the gulf between the two.
There are exceptions, it is true, and often touching
exceptions. Travellers cite instances of constancy
among savage peoples which reach the region of
romance. Probably there never was a time, indeed,
nor a race, when some measure of sympathy did not
stir between husband and wife. But when we con
sider all the facts, it is impossible to doubt that in the
region of all the higher affections the savage wife and
the savage husband were all but strangers to each
other.

What then was wanting for the perfecting of the
domestic tie, and how did Evolution secure it? In
the animal creation, we have already witnessed the
methods which Nature took to get more care out of
little care, to make a short-lived sympathy grow into
a great sympathy. Her method was first, concen
tration ; and second, extension of time. By giving a
Mother one or two young to care for instead of a
hundred, she made care practicable, and by lengthen
ing the period of infancy from hours to years she
made it inevitable. And these are again her methods
in perfecting love between man and wife. By abolish
ing the pairing season she lengthened the time for
love to grow in ; the next step is to perfect the object
on which it shall focus. For there was again the
same sort of barrier to a full-blown love which we
saw before in the animal kingdom. An animal
mother could not truly love in the early days because
she had a hundred or a thousand young. Man could

302 THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER.

not love in the early days because he had a dozen
wives. This love was too diluted to come to any
thing. What Evolution next worked at was to get
a quintessence. Polygamy, in other words the scat
tered love of many, must, from this time forward, be
changed into monogamy— the absorbing love of one.
And this transposition was gradually introduced. A
few polygamous people, a very few at first, become
monogamous. The new system worked better, it
spread, and was finally adopted by those higher
nations which it also helped to create. It is an
instance, nevertheless, of the slowness with which
radical changes succeed in leaving great masses of
mankind, that the older system, with the ban of
Evolution upon it, still survives in Modern Europe.
Yet there are signs, even among the uncivilized, that
polygamy is passing away. Among some almost
savage tribes it is unknown ; among others prohibited.
Even in a polygamous community it is usually only a
minority who have more wives than one. And where
the plural system is in full force, the tendency— the
Evolutionist would say the transition — to monogamy
is plainly marked, for among the many wives pos
sessed by any individual, there is generally one who
is first favorite and ranks as helpmeet or wife. The
stress just laid upon the ethical gains of the monog
amous state as contrasted with the polygamous, of
course only emphasizes one side of the question, and
by the pure naturalist might be ruled out of court.
Were the physiologist to go over the same ground he
could give a parallel account of the development, and
show that on the merely physiological plane the tran-
sition to monogamy and the rise of the Family was

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER. 303

a likely if not an inevitable result. It is at least
certain that during those later stages of social Evo
lution in which Monogamy has prevailed, the change
has heen in the best physical interests alike of the
parents, the offspring, and of society.

This barrier removed, Evolution had still much to
do to the other — the brevity of the time during which
husband and wife remained together. What short
work Nature had already made of this obstacle — by
abolishing the pairing season — we have just seen.
But that requires supplementing. It is not enough to
give time for mutual knowledge and affection after
marriage. Nature must deepen the result by extend
ing it to the time before marriage. In primitive times
there was no such thing as courtship. Men secured
their wives in three ways, and in uncivilized nations
so find them still. Among barbarous nations mar
riage is not a case of love, but of capture ; among the
semi-barbarous it is a case of barter ; and among the
imperfectly civilized — among whom we must often in
clude ourselves — a matter of convention. The second
of these, the purchase system — a slightly evolved form
of marriage by capture — is probably one through
which all human Marriage has passed ; and relics of it
still exist in the dos and other symbols among nations
with whom the custom of buying a bride has long
since passed away. By degrading the object of barter
to the level of a chattel, this system is a barrier to
high affection. But in most cases this is heightened
by the impossibility of that preliminary courtship
which leads to mutual knowledge and intelligent love.
The bride and bridegroom, in the extremer cases, meet
as total strangers ; and though affection may bud in

304 THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER.

after years, the mingling of unknown temperaments,
together with the destruction of reverence for woman
by treating her as an article of barter, make the
chances small of it blossoming into a flower.

Courtship, with its vivid perceptions and quickened
emotions, is a great opportunity for Evolution ; and to
institute and lengthen reasonably a period so rich in
impression is one of its latest and highest efforts. To
give love time, indeed, has been all along, and through
a great variety of arrangements, the chief means of
establishing it on the earth. Unfortunately, the lesson
of Nature here is being all too slowly learned even
among nations with its open book before them. In
some of the greatest of civilized countries, real mutual
knowledge between the youth of the sexes is unattain
able ; marriages are made only by a higher kind of
purchase, and the supreme step in life is taken in the
dark. Whatever safeguards this method provides it
cannot be final, nor can those nations rise to any ex
alted social height or mortil greatness till some change
occurs. It has been given especially to one nation to
lead the world in its assault upon this mistaken law,
and to demonstrate to mankind that in the uncon
strained and artless relations of youth lie higher safe
guards than the polite conventions of society can
afford. The people of America have proved that the
blending of the sweet currents of different family-lives
in social intercourse, in recreation, and — most original
of all — in education, can take place freely and joyously
without any sacrifice of man's reverence for woman, or
woman's reverence for herself; and, springing out of
these naturally mingled lives, there must more and
more come those sacred and happy homes which are

TUE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER. 305

the surest guarantees for the moral progress of a
nation. So long as the first concern of a country is
for its homes, it matters little what it seeks second or
third. Long before Evolution showed its scientific
interest in this first social aggregate, and proclaimed
it the strategic point in moral progress, poetry, philos
ophy, and history assigned the same great place to
Family-life. The one point, indeed, where all students
of the past agree, where all prophets of the future
meet, where all the sciences from biology to ethics are
enthusiastically at one, is in their faith in the im
perishable potentialties" of this yet most simple insti
tution.

With all these barriers removed it might now be
supposed that the process was at last complete.
But one of the surprises of E volution here awaits
us. All the arrangements are finished to fan the flame
of love, yet out of none of them was love itself be
gotten. The idea that the existence of sex accounts
for the existence of love is untrue. Marriage among
early races, as we have seen, has nothing to do with
love, Among savage peoples the phenomenon every
where confronts us of wedded life without a grain of
lovec Love chen is no necessary ingredient of the sex
relation ; it is not an outgrowth of passion. Love is
love, and has always been love, and has never been
anything lower. Whence, then, came it ? If neither
the Husband nor the Wife bestowed this gift upon t!ie
world, Who did ? It was A Little Child. Till this
appeared, Man's affection was non-existent ; Woman's
was frozen. The Man did not love the Woman ; the
Woman did not love the Man. But one day from its
Mother's very heart, from a shrine which her husband

306 THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER.

never visited nor knew was there, which she herself
dared scarce acknowledge, a Child drew forth the first
fresh bud of a Love which was not passion, a Love
which was not selfish, a Love which was an incense
from its Maker, and whose fragrance from that hour
went forth to sanctify the world. Later, long later,
through the same tiny and unconscious intermediary,
the father's soul was touched. And one day, in the
love of a little child, Father and Mother met.

That this is the true lineage of love, that it has
descended not from Husbands and Wives but through
children, is proved by the simplest study of savage
life. Love for children is always a prior and a
stronger thing than love between Father and Mother.
The indifference of the Husband to his Wife — though
often greatly exaggerated by anthropology — is all too
manifest, and throughout whole regions the Wife does
not love but only fears her Husband. For the
children on the other hand both parents have almost
always a regard. The universality of a Mother's Love
is one of the revelations of travel. Even among
cannibals, where the shocking treatment of Wives by
their Husbands is in daily evidence, a case of cruelty
to children from the Mother's side — apart from in
fanticide which has a rationale of its own — is rarely
heard of. The status of children if not ideal forms a
most striking contrast to the general moral and social
level : and one cannot but decide that they have been
unconsciously the true moral teachers of the world.
Had the institution of the Family depended on Sex
and not on affection it would probably never have
endured for any time. Love is eternal ; Sex, tran
sient. Its unbridled expression in individual natures,

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER. 307

and its recklessness when thwarted, have given rise
to exaggerated ideas of its power. In all uncontrolled
forms, however, it becomes so immediate a menace to
social order, that if it does not die out in self-destruc
tion it is checked by the community and forced into
lawful channels. The only thing that could bear the
heavy burden of social order and adapt itself to every
change and fresh demand was the indestructibly solid
yet elastic, strength of love. The care and culture
of love therefore became thenceforth the first great
charge of Evolution, and every obstruction to its path
began to be swept away. Whatever facilities could
further its career were gradually adopted, and changes
which soon began to pass over the face of all human
societies seemed but parts of one great conspiracy to
hasten its final reign.

For a prolonged and protective Fatherhood, once
introduced into the world, was immediately taken
charge of by Natural Selection. The children wno
had fathers to fight for them grew up ; those which
had not, were killed or starved. The lengthening of
the period during which Father and Mother kept to
gether meant double protection for the little ones ;
and the more they kept together for the first few
days or weeks, and the more the Father helped to
defend mother and child, the more chance for all three
in the end. The picture which Koppenfells draws of
the female Gorilla and her young ensconced in a nest
upon the fork of a tree, while Gorilla pere sat all
night at the foot with his back against the trunk
to protect them from the leopards, is a fair object-
lesson in the first or protectwe stage of the Father's
Evolution. When Man passed, however, as he prob-

308 THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER.

ably did, from the frugivorous to the carnivorous
state, the Father had the additional responsibility of
keeping his family in food. It would be impossible
for a Mother to hunt for game and attend to her
young ; and for a long time the young themselves
were useless in the chase, and must be entirely de
pendent on their parents' bounty. But this means
promotion to the Father. He is not only protector
but food-provider. It is impossible to believe that in
process of time the discharge of this office did not
bring some faint satisfactions to himself, that the mere
sight of his offspring fed instead of famished did not
give him a certain pleasure. And though the pleasure
at first may have been no more than the absence of
the annoyance they caused by the clamorousness of
their want, it became a stimulus to exertion, and led
in the end to rudimentary forms of sympathy and
self-denial.

Once established in the world as a winning force,
love could only yield to a greater force than itself and
greater force there is none. In the hands of Natural
Selection, therefore, it ran its course. Whatever phys
iological adjustments continued to go on beneath the
surface, ethical factors now determined extinction or
survival. Bad parents mean starved children, and
starved children will be replaced in the Struggle for
Life by full-fed children, and ere a few generations
parents without love will exist no more. The child,
on the other hand, which has drunk most deeply of
its Father's or its Mother's love lives to hand on that
which has spared it to a succeeding race. How much
of affection is handed on, or how little, matters not,
for Heredity works with the finest microscope, and

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER. 309

sees, and seizes, the invisible. In a second child,
reared hy parents one degree more loving than the
last, this ultimate particle of love will grow a little
more, and each succeeding Family in this royal line
will be richer in the elements which make for prog
ress than the last.

When we reach the human Family, we find that
this simple combination was already strong enough to
become the nucleus of the social and national life of
the world. For the moment the new forces of Sym
pathy, Brotherhood, Self-denial, or Love, began to
work among the isolated units which made up primi
tive Man, the whole composition and character of the
aggregate began to change. Sooner or later in the
recurring necessities of savage existence there came
an opportunity for the members of the first combina
tion, the little group of Father, Mother, and Sons,
to act together. However unworthily this primitive
group merited the name of Family, there was here
what at that time was of final importance — the ele
ments of physical strength. He who formerly stood
alone in the Struggle for Life now found himself
backed on occasion by an inner circle. Those who
outside this circle ventured to oppose or offend an
individual within it had the Family to reckon with.
Ends were gained by the new alliance which were un
attainable single-handed by any individual member of
the tribe, and whether enlisted to evade disaster or
secure a prey, to resist an injustice or avenge a wrong,
the odds henceforth and always were in favor of the
combination. When it is remembered how, owing to
the comparative equality of the competitors in the
conflict of savage existence, even an infinitesimal

310 THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER.

advantage on one side or the other determines health
or starvation, survival or extinction, the importance
of the first feeble effort at federation must be recog
nized. Shoulder to shoulder has been the watchword
all through history of national development. Almost
from the very first, indeed, the Family and not the in
dividual must have been the unit of Tribal life ; and as
Families grew more and more definite, they became
the recognized piers of the social structure and gave
a first stability to the race of men.

But great as are the physical advantages of the
Family, the ethical uses, even in the early days of its
existence, place this institution at the head of all the
creations of Evolution. For the Family is not only
its greatest creation, but its greatest instrument for
further creation. The ethical changes begin almost
the moment it is formed. One immediate effect, for
instance, of the formation of Family groups was to
take off from any single individual the perpetual
strain of the Struggle for Life. The Family as a
whole must sometimes fight, but the responsibility
and the duty are now distributed, and those who were
once solely pre-occupied with the personal struggle
will have respites, during which other things wilJ
occupy their minds. Attention thus called off from
environing enemies, the members of the Family will,
as it were, discover one another. New relations
among them will spring up, new adjustments to one
another's presence and to one another's needs, and
hitherto unknown elements of character will be grad
ually called to the surface. That unselfishness, in
some rude form, should no\v grow up is a necessity of
living together. A man cannot be a member of a

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER. 311

Family and remain an utter egoist. His interests are
perforce divided, and though the Family group is a
small surface for unselfishness to spread to and to
practise on, no greater feat could as yet be attempted,
and Evolution never runs risks of too rapid develop
ment or over-strain. With the incorporation of the
Family into a Clan or Tribe the area will presently
be extended, and the necessity of controlling self-
interest more thoroughly, or merging it in a wider
interest, become more obligatory. But to prepare the
altruistic sentiment for so great an abnegation, the
simpler discipline of the Family was required. How
firmly Families in time became welded together in
mutual interest and support, and how much crude
Altruism this implies, is evident from the place of
Family feuds and the power of great Families and
Mouses both in ancient and modern history. A strik
ing instance is the Vendetta. To avenge a Family
insult in countries where this prevails was a sacred
duty to all the relatives, and even the last surviving
member willingly gave up his life to vindicate its
honor. So strong indeed sometimes has grown the
power of individual Families that the more desirable
spread of Altruism to the Nation was threatened, and
wider interests so much forgotten that the Family
became the enemy of the State. Nothing could more
forcibly show the tremendous power of self-develop
ment contained within the Family circle, and the
solidity and strength to which it can grow, than
that, time after time in history, it has had to be
crushed and broken up by all the forces of the
State.

Among other elements in human nature fostered in

312 THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER.

the Family is one of exceptional interest. The at
tempt has been made to show that from the inevitable
relations of early Family life, the sense of Duty first
dawned upon the world. The theme is too great, too
intricate, and too dangerous to open under the limita
tions of the present inquiry, for these deny us the
appeal to Society, to Religion, and even to the Con
science of the higher Man. But it is due to the
Father, whose Evolution we are tracing, that the
share he is supposed by some authorities to take in it,
should be at least named.

That morality in general has something to do with
the relations of people to one another is evident, as
every one knows, from the mere derivation of the
word. Mores, morals, are in the first instance cus
toms, the customs or ways which people have when
they are together. Now, the Family is the first occa
sion of importance where we get people together.
And as there are not only a number of people in a
Family, but different kinds of people, there will be a
variety in the relations subsisting between them, in
the customs which stereotype the most frequently re
peated actions necessitated by these relations, and in
the moods and attitudes of mind accompanying them.
Leaving out of sight differences of kind among broth
ers and sisters, consider the probably more divergent
and certainly more dominant influences of Father and
Mother. What the relation of child to Mother has
crystallized into we have sufficiently marked— it is a
relation of direct dependence, and its product is Love.
But the Father is a wholly different influence. What
attitude does the Child take up in this austerer pres
ence, and what ways of acting, what customs, mores,

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER. 313

morals, are engrained in the child's mind through it?
The acknowledged position of the Father in most early
tribes is head of the Family. To the children, and
generally even to the Mother, he represents Author
ity. He is the children's chief. Bachoven has famil
iarized us with the idea of a Matriarchate, or Maternal
Family ; but although exceptional tribes have given
supremacy to the Mother, the rule is for the Father to
be supreme. As head of the Family, therefore, it was
his business to make the Family laws. No doubt the
Mother also made laws ; but the Father, as the more
terrible person, exacted obedience with greater sever
ity, and his laws acquired more force. To do what
was pleasing in his eyes was a necessity with the
children, and his favor or his frown became standards
of what was " good " and what was " bad." Low as
this standard was — the fear or favor of a savage
Father — it was a beginning of right mores, good con
duct, proper manners. Plant in the mind, or evoke
from it, the idea of acting in a given way with refer
ence to some half-dozen daily trifles when done in the
presence of one authoritative individual, and Evolu
tion has already found something to work on. The
children have got six, if not ten commandments. Ex
tend the half-dozen things done rightly to a whole
dozen, and then to a score, and then to a hundred;
and let it become habitual to do these things rightly.
When the right doing of these things commends the
doer to one person, he will next be apt to commend
himself by similar conduct to other persons, if their
standard happens to be the same. Whether good be
havior purchases favor or simply succeeds in evading
penalties is at first immaterial. All that is required,

314 THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER.

under whatever sanctions, is that some standard of
good or bad shall arise. No abstract sense of duty, of
course, here exists ; no perfect law ; it is a purely per
sonal and local code ; but the word duty has at least
received a first imperfect meaning ; and the Father, in
some rough way, forms an external conscience to
those beneath him.

Such is the tentative theory of the advocates of
Evolutional Ethics. It may or may not be a possible
account of the rise of a sense of obligation, but it is
certain that it does not account for the whole of it.
Why, also, that particular thing should be elicited
under the circumstances described is an unanswered
question. In attempting to trace its rise, no rationale
appears of its origin ; all proofs, in short, of its evolu
tion take for granted its previous existence. A latent
thing has become active ; an invisible thing has be
come apparent. In one sense a relation has been
created, in another sense a quality in that relation
has been revealed. A new experiment upon human
nature has been tried; a new discovery of its prop
erties has been the result.

That these moral elements, on the other hand, must
have a beginning somewhere in space and time is cer
tain enough. Not less necessary to the world than
the Mother's gift of Love is the twin offering of the
Father — Righteousness. And if, almost before the
soul is born, the shadowy outline of a moral order
should begin to loom out in history, the later phases
and the later sanctions lose nothing of their quality,
are all the more wonderful and all the more divine,
because met by moral adumbrations in the distant
past. If the later children had their ten command-

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER. 315

ments given them in one way, they cannot grudge
that the world's earlier children should have been
given their two or three commandments in another
way — another way which, nevertheless, did we know
all, might turn out to be but another phase of the
same way. But it is impossible even to approach the
Evolution of Morality until we have carried Man some
stages further up his Ascent. It is only when he
reaches the social stage, when he becomes aggregated
into clans, tribes, and nations, that this problem
opens. For the present we must content ourselves
with having witnessed his arrival in the Human
Family — the starting-point and threshold of the true
moral life.

For a long time, it is true, the Family circle, as a
circle, was incomplete. Machinery must itself evolve
before its products evolve. Scarcely defined at all,
broken as soon as formed, the earlier circles allowed
their strongest forces to escape almost at the moment
they generated. But the walls grew higher and
higher with the advance of history. The leakage
became less and less. With the Christian era the
machinery was complete ; the circle finally closed in,
and became a secluded shrine where the culture of
everything holy and beautiful was carried on. The
path by which this ideal consummation was reached
was not, as we have seen, a straight path ; nor has the
integrity of the institution been always preserved
through the later centuries. The difficulty of realiz
ing the ideal may be judged of by the fewness of the
nations now living who have reached it, and by the
multitude of peoples and tribes who have vanished
from the earth without attaining. From the failure

31(j THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER.

to fulfil some one or other of the required conditions
people after people and nation after nation have come
together only to disperse, and leave no legacy behind
except the lesson — as yet in few cases understood — of
why they failed.

Yet whether the road be straight or devious is of
little moment. The one significant thing is that it
rises. We have reached a stage in Evolution at
which physiological gains are guarded and accent
uated, if not in an ethical interest, at least by eth
ical factors becoming utilized by natural selection.
Henceforth affection becomes a power in the world ;
and whatever physiological adjustments continue to
go on beneath the surface, the most attached Families
will have a better chance of surviving and of trans
mitting their moral characteristics to succeeding gen
erations. The completion of the arch of Family Life
forms one of the great, if not the greatest of the land
marks of history. If the crowning work of Organic
Evolution is the Mammalia ; the consummation of
the Mammalia is the Family. Physically, psychi
cally, ethically, the Family is the masterpiece of
Evolution. The creation of Evolution, it was destined
to become the most active instrument and ally which
Evolution has ever had. For what is its evolutionary
significance? It is the generator and the repository of
the forces which alone can carry out the social and
moral progress of the world. There they rally when
they become enfeebled, there their excesses are coun
terbalanced, and thence they radiate out, refined and
reinforced, to do their holy work.

Looking at the mere dynamics of the question, the
Family contains all the machinery, and nearly all the

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER. 317

power, for the moral education of mankind. Feebly,
but adequately, in the early chapters of Man's history
it fulfilled its function of nursing Love, the Mother of
all morality ; and Righteousness, the Father of all
morality, so preparing a parentage for all the beauti
ful spiritual children which in later years should
spring from them. If life henceforth is to go on at
all, it must be a better life, a more loving life, a more
abundant life ; and this premium upon Love means—
if it means anything— that Evolution is taking hence
forth an ethical direction. It is no more possible to
interpret Nature physically from this point than to
interpret a " Holy Family " of Raphael's in terms of
the material structure of canvas or the qualities of
pigments. Canvas may be coarse or fine, pigments
may be vegetable or mineral ; but whether the colors
be crushed out of madder or ground out of arsenic or
lead is of no importance now. Once these things
were important; by infinitely slow processes Nature
formed them ; by clever arts the colorman prepared
them. But the " Holy Family " did not lie potentially
in the madder-bud, nor in the earth with the lead and
arsenic, nor in the laboratory with the colorman. lie
who claims Nature for Matter and Physical force
makes the same assumption that these would do if
they claimed the painting. In a far truer sense than
Raphael produced his "Holy Family" Nature has
produced a Holy Family. Not for centuries but for
millenniums the Family has survived. Time has not
tarnished it; no later art has improved upon it; nor
genius discovered anything more lovely ; nor religion
anything more divine. From the bee's cell and the
butterfly's wing men draw what they call the Argu-

318 THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER.

ment from Design ; but it is in the kingdoms which
come without observation, in these great immaterial
orderings which Science is but beginning to perceive,
hat the purposes of Creation are revealed.

CHAPTER X.

INVOLUTION.

years ago, in the clay which in every part of
the world is found underlying beds of coal, a peculiar
fossil was discovered and named by science Stigmaria.
It occurred in great abundance and in many countries,
and from the strange way in which it ramified
through the clay it was supposed to be some extinct
variety of a gigantic water-weed. In the coal itself
another fossil was discovered, almost as abundant but
far more beautiful, and from the exquisite carving
which ornamented its fluted stem it received the name
of Sigillaria. One day a Canadian geologist, studying
Sigillaria in the field, made a new discovery. Finding
the trunk of a Sigillaria standing erect in a bed of
coal, he traced the column downwards to the clay
beneath. To his surprise he found it ended in Stig
maria. This branching fossil in the clay was no
longer a water-weed. It was the root of which Sigil
laria was the stem, and the clay was the soil in which
the great coal-plant grew.

Through many chapters, often in the dark, every
where hampered by the clay, we have been working
among roots. Of what are they the roots ? To what

319

320 INVOLUTION.

order do they belong? By what process have they
grown ? What connection have they with the realm
above, or the realm beneath ? Is it a Stigmaria or a
Sigillaria world ?

Till yesterday Science did not recognize them even
as roots. They were classified apart. They led to
nothing. No organic connection was known between
lower Nature and that wholly separate and all but
antagonistic realm, the higher world of Man. Atoms,
cells, plants, animals were the material products of a
separate creation, the clay from which Man took his
clay-body, and no more. The higher world, also, was
a system by itself. It rose out of nothing ; it rested
upon nothing. Clay, where the roots lay, was the
product of inorganic forces; Coal, which enshrined
the tree, was a creation of the sunlight. What fellow
ship had light with darkness ? What possible connec
tion could exist between that beautiful organism
which stood erect in the living, and that which lay
prone in the dead ? Yet, by a process doubly verified,
the organic connection between these two has now
been traced. Working upwards through the clay the
biologist finds what he took to be an organism of the
clay leaving his domain and passing into a world
above — a world which he had scarcely noticed before,
and into which, with such instruments as he employs,
he cannot follow it. Working downward through the
higher world, the psychologist, the moralist, the soci
ologist, behold the even more wonderful spectacle of
the things they had counted a peculiar possession of
the upper kingdom, burying themselves in ever at
tenuating forms in the clay beneath. What is to be
made of this discovery? Once more, Is it a Stigmaria

INVOLUTION. 321

or a Sigillaria world? Is the biologist to give up his
clay or the moralist his higher kingdom ? Are Mind,
Morals, Men, to be interpreted in terms of roots, or
are atoms and cells to be judged by the flowers and
fruits of the tree ?

The first fruit of the discovery must be that each
shall explore with new respect the other's world, and,
instead of delighting to accentuate their contrasts,
strive to magnify their infinite harmonies. Old as is
the world's vision of a cosmos, and universal as has
been its dream of the unity of Nature, neither has
ever stood before the imagination complete. Poetry
felt, but never knew, that the universe was one ;
Biology perceived the profound chemical balance
between the inorganic and organic kingdoms, and no
more ; Physics, discovering the correlation of forces,
constructed a cosmos of its own; Astronomy, through
the law of gravitation, linked us, but mechanically,
with the stars. But it was reserved for Evolution to
make the final revelation of the unity of the world, to
comprehend everything under one generalization, to
explain everything by one great end. Its omnipresent
eye saw every phenomenon and every law. It
gathered all that is and has been into one last whole
— a whole whose very perfection consists in the all
but infinite distinctions of the things which it unites.

What is often dreaded in Evolution — the danger of
obliterating distinctions that are vital — is a ground
less fear. Stigmaria can never be anything more than
root, and Sigillaria can never be anything less than
stem. To show their connection is not to transpose
their properties. The wider the distinctions seen
among their properties the profounder is the Thought
21

322 INVOLUTION.

which unites them, the more rich and rational the
Cosmos which comprehends them. For "the unity
which we see in Nature is that kind of Unity which
the Mind recognizes as the result of operations similar
to its own — not a unity which consists in mere same
ness of material, or in mere identity of composition,
or in mere uniformity of structure ; but a unity which
consists in the subordination of all these to similar
aims, not to similar principles of action — that is to
say, in like methods of yoking a few elementary forces
to the discharge of special functions, and to the pro
duction, by adjustment, of one harmonious whole." 1

Yet did Sigillaria grow out of Stigmaria ? Did Mind,
Morals, Men, evolve out of Matter ? Surely if one is
the tree and the other the root of that tree, and if
Evolution means the passage of the one into the other,
there is no escape from this conclusion — no escape
therefore from the crassest materialism? If this is
really the situation, the lower must then include the
higher, and Evolution, after all, be a process of the
clay? This is a frequent, a natural, and a wholly
unreflecting inference from a very common way of
stating the Evolution theory. It arises from a total
misconception of wrhat a root is. Because a thing is
seen to have roots, it is assumed that it has grown out
of these roots, and must therefore belong to the root-
order. But neither of these things is true in Nature.
Are the stem, branch, leaf, flower, fruit of a tree roots?
Do they belong to the root-order? They do not
Their whole morphology is different ; their whole
physiology is different ; their reactions upon the world
around are different. But it must be allowed that
1 Duke of Argyll, The Unity of Nature, p. 44.

INVOLUTION. 323

they are at least contained in the root ? No single one
of them is contained in the root. If not in the root,
then in the clay ? Neither are they contained in the
clay. But they grow out of clay, are they not made
out of clay ? They do not grow out of clay, and they
are not made out of clay. It is astounding sometimes
how little those who venture to criticise biological
processes seem to know of its simplest facts. Fill a
flower-pot with clay, and plant in it a seedling. At the
end of four years it has become a small tree ; it is six
feet high ; it weighs ten pounds. But the clay in the
pot is still there ? A moiety of it has gone, but it is
not appreciably diminished ; it has not, except the
moiety, passed into the tree ; the tree does not live on
clay nor on any force contained in the clay. It cannot
have grown out of the seedling, for the seedling contained
but a grain for every pound contained in the tree. It
cannot have grown from the root, because the root is
there now, has lost nothing to the tree, has itself gained
from the tree, and at first was no more there than
the tree.

Sigillaria, then, as representing the ethical order,
did not grow out of Stigmaria as representing the
organic or the material order. Trees not only do not
evolve out of their roots, but whole classes in the
plant world — the sea-weeds for instance — have no roots
at all. If any possible relation exists it is exactly
the opposite one — it is the root which evolves from the
tree. Trees send down roots in a far truer sense than
roots send up trees. Yet neither is the whole truth.
The true function of the root is to give stability to the
tree, and to afford a medium for conveying into it
inorganic matter from without. And this brings us

324 INVOLUTION.

face to face with the real relation. Tree and root — the
seed apart — find their explanation not in one another
nor in something in themselves, but mainly in some
thing outside themselves. The secret of Evolution lies,
in short, with the Environment. In the Environment,
in that in which things live and move and have
their being, is found the secret of their being, and
especially of their becoming. And what is that in
which things live and move and have their being ? It
is Nature, the world, the cosmos — and something
more, some One more, an Infinite Intelligence and an
Eternal Will. Everything that lives, lives in virtue
of its correspondences with this Environment. Evolu
tion is not to unfold from within ; it is to infold from
without. Growth is no mere extension from a root
but a taking possession of, or a being possessed by, an
ever widening Environment, a continuous process of
assimilation of the seen or Unseen, a ceaseless re-dis
tribution of energies flowing into the evolving organ
ism from the Universe around it. The supreme factor
in all development is Environment. Half the con
fusions which reign round the process of Evolution,
and half the objections to it, arise from considering
the evolving object as a self-sufficient whole. Produce
an organism, plant, animal, man, society, which will
evolve in vacuo and the right is yours to say that the
tree lies in the root, the flower in the bud, the man in
the embryo, the social organism in the family of an
anthropoid ape. If an organism is to be judged in
terms of the immediate Environment of its roots, the
tree is a clay tree ; but if it is to be judged by stem,
leaves, fruit, it is not a clay tree. If the moral or
social organism is to be judged in terms of the Envi-

INVOLUTION. 325

ronment of its roots, the moral and social organism is
a material organism ; but if it is to be judged in terms
of the higher influences which enter into the making
of its stem, leaves, fruit, it is not a material organism.
Everything that lives, and every part of everything
that lives, enters into relation with different parts of
the Environment and with different things in the
Environment ; and at every step of its Ascent it com
passes new ranges of the Environment, and is acted
upon, and acts, in different ways from those in which
it was acted upon, or acted, at the previous stage.

For what is most of all essential to remember is
that not only is Environment the prime factor in de
velopment, but that the Environment itself rises with
every evolution of any form of life. To regard the
Environment as a fixed quantity and a fixed quality
is, next to ignoring the altruistic factor, the cardinal
error of evolutional philosophy. With every step a
climber rises up a mountain side his Environment
must change. At a thousand feet the air is lighter
and purer than at a hundred, and as the effect varies
with the cause, all the reactions of the air upon his
body are altered at the higher level. His pulse
quickens ; his spirit grows more buoyant ; the en
ergies of the upper world flow in upon him. All the
other phenomena change— the plants are Alpine, the
animals are a hardier race, the temperature falls,
the very world he left behind wears a different look.
At three thousand feet the causes, the effects, and
the phenomena change again. The horizon is wider,
the light intenser, the air colder, the top nearer ;
the nether world recedes from view. At six thousand
feet, if we may accentuate the illustration till it

326 INVOLUTION.

contains more of the emphasis of the reality, he
enters the region of snow. Here is a change brought
about by a small and perfectly natural rise which
yet amounts to a revolution. Another thousand feet
and there is another revolution — he is ushered into
the domain of mist. Still another thousand, and
the climax of change has come. He stands at the
top, and, behold, the Sun. None of the things he
has encountered in his progress toward the top are
new things. They are the normal phenomena of alti
tude — the scenes, the energies, the correspondences,
natural to the higher slopes. He did not create any
of these things as he rose ; they were not created as
he rose ; they did not lie potentially in the plains or in
the mountain foot. What has happened is simply
that in rising he has encountered them— some for the
first time, which are therefore wholly new to him ;
others which, though known before, now flow into his
being in such fuller measure, or enter into such fresh
relations among themselves, or with the changed
being which at every step he has become, as to be
also practically new.

Man, in his long pilgrimage upwards from the clay,
passes through regions of ever-varying character.
Each breath drawn and utilized to make one upward
step brings him into relation with a fractionally
higher air, a fractionally different world. The new
energies he there receives are utilized, and in virtue of
them he rises to a third, and from a third to a fourth.
As in the animal kingdom the senses open one by one
—the eye progressing from the mere discernment of
light and darkness to the blurred image of things
near, and then to clearer vision of the more remote ;

INVOLUTION. 327

the ear passing from the tremulous sense of -vibration
to distinguish with ever-increasing delicacy the
sounds of far-off things — so in the higher world the
moral and spiritual senses rise and quicken till they
compass qualities unknown before and impossible to
the limited faculties of the earlier life. So Man, not
by any innate tendency to progress in himself, nor by
the energies inherent in the protoplasmic cell from
which he first set out, but by a continuous feeding and
reinforcing of the process from without, attains the
higher altitudes, and from the sense-world at the
mountain foot ascends with ennobled and ennobling
faculties until he greets the Sun.

What is the Environment of the Social tree ? It is
all the things, and all the persons, and all the in
fluences, and all the forces with which, at each suc
cessive stage of progress, it enters into correspond
ence. And this Environment inevitably expands as
the Social tree expands and extends its correspond
ences. At the savage stage Man compasses one set
of relations, at the rude social stage another, at the
civilized stage a third, and each has its own re
actions. The social, the moral, and the religious
forces beat upon all social beings in the order in which
the capacities for them unfold, and according to the
measure in which the capacities themselves are fitted
to contain them. And from what ultimate source do
they come ? There is only one source of everything
in the world. They come from the same source as the
Carbonic Acid Gas, the Oxygen, the Nitrogen, and the
Vapor of Water, which from the outer world enter
into the growing plant. These also visit the plant in
the order in which the capacities for them unfold, and

328 IN VOL UTION.

according to the measure in which these capacicies can
contain them.

The fact that the higher principles come from the
same Environment as those of the plant, neverthe
less does not imply that they are the same as those
which enter into the plant. In the plant they are
physical, in Man spiritual. If anything is to be im
plied it is not that the spiritual energies are physical,
but that the physical energies are spiritual. To call
the things in the physical world " material " takes us
no nearer the natural, no further away from the
spiritual. The roots of a tree may rise from what
we call a physical world ; the leaves may be bathed
by physical atoms ; even the energy of the tree may
be solar energy, but the tree is itself. The tree is a
Thought, a unity, a rational purposeful whole ; the
" matter " is but the medium of their expression.
Call it all — matter, energy, tree — a physical produc
tion, and have we yet touched its ultimate reality?
Are we even quite sure that what we call a phys
ical world is, after all, a physical world ? The pre
ponderating view of science at present is that it
is not. The very term "material world," we are
told, is a misnomer; that tiie world is a spiritual
world, merely employing " matter " for its manifesta
tions.

But surely there is still a fallacy. Are not these so-
called social forces, the effect of Society and not its
cause ? Has not Society to generate them before they
regenerate Society ? True, but to generate is not to
create. Society is machinery, a medium for the
transmission of energy, but no more a medium for its
creation than a steam engine is for the creation of its

INVOLUTION. 329

energy. Whence then the social energies ? The
answer is as before. Whence the physical energies ?
And Science has only one answer to that. " Consider
the position into which Science has brought us. We
are led by scientific logic to an unseen, and by scienti
fic analogy to the spirituality of this unseen. In fine,
our conclusion is, that the visible universe has been
developed by an intelligence resident in the Unseen." l
There is only one theory of the method of Creation in
the field, and that is Evolution ; but there is only one
theory of origins in the field, and that is Creation.
Instead of abolishing a creative Hand, Evolution de
mands it. Instead of being opposed to Creation, all
theories of Evolution begin by assuming it. If Science
does not formally posit it, it never posits anything
less. "The doctrine of Evolution," writes Mr. Huxley,
" is neither theistic nor anti-theistic. It has no more
to do with theism than the first book of Euclid has.
It does not even come in contact with theism con
sidered as a scientific doctrine." But when it touches
the question of origins, it is either theistic or silent.
" Behind the co-operating forces of Nature," says
Weismann, " which aim at a purpose, we must admit
a cause, . . . inconceivable in its nature, of which
we can only say one thing with certainty, that it must
be theological."

The fallacy of the merely quantitative theory of
Evolution is apparent. To interpret any organism in
terms of the organism solely is to omit reference to
the main instrument of its Evolution, and therefore to
leave the process, scientifically and philosophically,

1 Balfour Stewart and Tail, The Unseen Universe, 6th edition,
p. 221.

830 INVOLUTION.

unexplained. It is as if one were to construct a theory
of the career of a millionaire in terms of the pocket-
money allowed him when a schoolboy. Disregard the
fact that more pocket-money was allowed the school
boy as he passed from the first form to the sixth ; that
his allowance was increased as he came of age ; that
now, being a man, not a boy, he was capable of more
wisely spending it ; that being wise he put his money
to paying uses; and that interest and capital were in
vested and re-invested as years went on — disregard
all this and you cannot account for the rise of the mill
ionaire. As well construct the millionaire from the
potential gold contained in his first sixpence — a six
pence which never left his pocket — as construct a
theory of the Evolution of Man from the protoplasmic
cell apart from its Environment. It is only when in
terpreted, not in terms of himself, but in terms of
Environment, and of an Environment increasingly
appropriated, quantitatively and qualitatively, with
each fresh stage of the advance, that a consistent
theory is possible, or that the true nature of Evolu
tion can appear.

A child does not grow out of a child by spon
taneous unfoldings. The process is fed from with
out. The body assimilates food, the mind assimi
lates books, the moral nature draws upon affection,
the religious faculties nourish the higher being from
Ideals. Time brings not only more things, but new
things ; the higher nature inaugurates possession
of, or by, the higher order. " It lies in the very
nature of the case that the . earliest form of that
which lives and develop's is the least adequate to
its nature, and therefore that from which we can,

INVOLUTION. 331

get the least distinct clue to the inner principle
of that nature. Hence to trace a living being back
to its beginning, and to explain what follows by
such beginning, would be simply , to omit almost
all that characterizes it, and then to suppose that in
what remains we have the secret of its existence.
That is not really to explain it, but to explain
it away ; for on this method, we necessarily re
duce the features that distinguish it to a minimum,
and, when we have done so, the remainder may
well seem to be itself reducible to something in
which the principle in question does not mani
fest itself at all. If we carry the animal back
to protoplasm, it may readily seem possible to ex
plain it as a chemical compound. And, in like
manner, by the same minimizing process, we may
seem to succeed in reducing consciousness and
self-consciousness in its simplest form to sensation,
and sensation in its simplest form to something
not essentially different from the nutritive life of
plants. The fallacy of the sorites may thus be
used to conceal all qualitative changes under the
guise of quantitative addition or diminution, and
to bridge over all difference by the idea of gradual
transition. For, as the old school of etymologists
showed, if we are at liberty to interpose as many
connecting links as we please, it becomes easy to
imagine that things the most heterogeneous should
spring out of each other. While, however, the hy
pothesis of gradual change — change proceeding by
infinitesimal stages which melt into each other so
that the eye cannot detect where one begins and the
other ends — makes such a transition easier for imagi-

332 INVOLUTION.

nation, it does nothing to diminish the difficulty or
the wonder of it for thought" l

The value of philosophical criticism to science has
seldom appeared to more advantage than in these
words of the Master of Balliol. The following passage
from Martineau may be fitly placed beside them : —
"In not a few of the progressionists the weak illusion
is unmistakable, that, with time enough, you may get
everything out of next to nothing. Grant us, they
seem to say, any tiniest granule of power, so close up
on zero that it is not worth begrudging — allow it some
trifling tendency to infinitesimal movement — and we
will show you how this little stock became the
kosmos, without ever taking a step worth thinking
of, much less constituting a case for design. The
argument is a mere appeal to an incompetency in the
human imagination, in virtue of which magnitudes
evading conception are treated as out of existence ;
and an aggregate of inappreciable increments is simul
taneously equated, — in its cause to nothing, in its
effect to the whole of things. You manifestly want
the same causality, whether concentrated in a
moment or distributed through incalculable ages ;
only in drawing upon it a logical theft is more
easily committed piecemeal than wholesale. Surely it
is a mean device for a philosopher thus to crib causa
tion by hairs-breadths, to put it out at compound
interest through all time, and then disown the debt." 2

It is not said that the view here given of the process
of Evolution has been the actual process. The illus
trations have been developed rather to clear up dif-

1 Edward Caird, The Evolution of Relic/ ion, Vol. i., pp. 49-50.

2 Martineau, Essays, Philosophical and Theological, p. 141.

INVOLUTION. 333

ficulties than to state a theory. The time is not ripe
for daring to present to our imaginations even a par
tial view of what that transcendent process may have
been. At present we can only take our ideas of
growth from the growing things around us, and in
this analogy we have taken no account of the most
essential fact — the seed. Nor is it asserted, far as these
illustrations point in that direction, that the course
of Evolution has been a continuous, uninterrupted,
upward rise. On the whole it has certainly been a
rise; but whether a rise without leap or break or
pause, or — what is more likely — a progress in
rhythms, pulses, and waves, or — what is unlikely — a
cataclysmal ascent by steps abrupt and steep, may
possibly never be proved.

There are reverent minds who ceaselessly scan the
fields of Nature and the books of Science in search of
gaps — gaps which they will fill up with God. As if
God lived in gaps? What view of Nature or of
Truth is theirs whose interest in Science is not in
what it can explain but in what it cannot, whose quest
is ignorance not knowledge, whose daily dread is that
the cloud may lift, and who, as darkness melts from
this field or from that, begin to tremble for the place
of His abode? What needs altering in such finely
jealous souls is at once their view of Nature and of
God. Nature is God's writing, and can only tell the
truth ; God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.

If by the accumulation of irresistible evidence we
are driven — may not one say permitted — to accept
Evolution as God's method in creation, it is a mistaken
policy to glory in what it cannot account for. The
reason why men grudge to Evolution each of its fresh

334 INVOLUTION.

claims to show how things have been made is the
groundless fear that if we discover how they are made
we minimize their divinity. When things are known,
that is to say, we conceive them as natural, on Man's
level ; when they are unknown, we call them divine —
as if our ignorance of a thing were the stamp of its
divinity. If God is only to be left to the gaps in our
knowledge, where shall we be when these gaps are
filled up ? And if they are never to be filled up, is
God only to be found in the disorders of the world ?
Those who yield to the temptation to reserve a point
here and there for special divine interposition are apt
to forget that this virtually excludes God from the
rest of the process. If God appears periodically, he-
disappears periodically. If he comes upon the scene at
special crises he is absent from the scene in the inter
vals. Whether is all-God or occasional-God the no
bler theory ? Positively, the idea of an immanent God,
which is the God of Evolution, is infinitely grander
than the occasional wonder-worker who is the God of
an old theology. Negatively, the older view is not
only the less worthy, but it is discredited by science.
And as to facts, the daily miracle of a flower, the
courses of the stars, the upholding and sustaining day
by day of this great palpitating world, need a living
Will as much as the creation of atoms at the first. We
know growth is the method by which things are made
in Nature, and we know no other method. We do not
know that there are not other methods ; but if there
are we do not know them. Those cases which we
do not know to be growths, we do not know to be
anything else, and we may at least suspect them to
be growths. Nor are they any the less miraculous

INVOLUTION. 335

because they appear to us as growths. A miracle is
not something quick. The doings of these things may
seem to us no miracle, nevertheless it is a miracle that
they have been done.

But, after all, the miracle of Evolution is not the
process, but the product. Beside the wonder of the
result, the problem of the process is a mere curiosity
of Science. For what is the product ? It is not mount
ain and valley, sky and sea, flower and star, this
glorious and beautiful world in which Man's body
finds its home. It is not the god-like gift of Mind
nor the ordered cosmos where it finds so noble an exer
cise for its illimitable powers. It is that which of all
other things in the universe commends itself, with
increasing sureness as time goes on, to the reason and
to the heart of Humanity — Love. Love is the final
result of Evolution. This is what stands out in Nat
ure as the supreme creation. Evolution is not prog
ress in matter. Matter cannot progress. It is a
progress in spirit, in that which is limitless, in that
which is at once most human, most rational, and most
divine. Whatever controversy rages as to the factors
of Evolution, whatever mystery enshrouds its steps,
no doubt exists of its goal. The great landmarks we
have passed, and we are not yet half-way up the
Ascent, each separately and all together have declared
the course of Nature to be a rational course, and its
end a moral end. At the furthest limit of time, in
protoplasm itself, we saw start forth the two great
currents which, by their action and reaction, as Self
ishness and Unselfishness, were to supply in ever
accentuating clearness the conditions of the moral
life. Following their movements upward through the

336 IN VOL UTION.

organic kingdom, we watched the results which each
achieved — always high, and always waxing higher;
and though what we called Evil dogged each step with
sinister and sometimes staggering malevolence, the
balance when struck, was always good upon the
whole. Then came the last great act of the organic
process, the act which finally revealed to teleology its
hitherto obscured end, the organization of the Mam
malia, the Kingdom of the Mothers. So full of ethical
possibility is this single creation that one might stake
the character of Evolution upon the Mammalia alone.
On the biological side, as we have seen, the Evolution
of the Mammalia means the Evolution of Mothers; on
the sociological side, the Evolution of the Family ; and
on the moral side, the Evolution of Love. How are
we to characterize a process which ripened fruits like
these ? That the very animal kingdom had for its end
and crown a class of animals who owe their name,
their place, and their whole existence to Altruism;
that through these Mothers society has been furnished
with an institution for generating, concentrating,
purifying, and re-distributing Love in all its enduring
forms ; that the perfecting of Love is thus not an inci
dent in Nature, but everywhere the largest part of her
task, begun with the first beginnings of life, and con
tinuously developing quantitatively and qualitatively
to the close — all this has been read into Nature by our
own imaginings, or it is the revelation of a purpose
of benevolence and a God whose name is Love. The
sceptic, we are sometimes reminded, has presented
crucial difficulties to the theist founded on the
doctrine of Evolution. Here is a problem which the
theist may leave with the sceptic. That that which

INVOLUTION. 337

has emerged has the qualities it has, that even the
Mammalia should have emerged, that that class should
stand related to the life of Man in the way it does,
that Man has lived because he loved, and that he lives
to love — these, on any theory but one, are insoluble
problems.

Forbidden to follow the Evolution of Love into the
higher fields of history and society, we take courage to
make a momentary exploration in a still lower field —
a field so far beneath the plant and animal level that
hitherto we have not dared to enter it. Is it conceiv
able that in inorganic Nature, among the very mate
rial bases of the world, there should be anything to re
mind us of the coming of this Tree of Life ? To ex
pect even foreshadowings of ethical characters there
were an anachronism too great for expression. Yet
there is something there, something which is at least
worth recalling in the present connection.

The earliest condition in which Science allows us to
picture this globe is that of a fiery mass of nebulous
matter. At the second stage it consists of countless
myriads of similar atoms, roughly outlined into a rag
ged cloud-ball, glowing with heat, and rotating in
space with inconceivable velocity. By what means
can this mass be broken up, or broken down, or made
into a solid world? By two things — mutual attrac
tion and chemical affinity. The moment when within
this cloud-ball the conditions of cooling temperature
are such that two atoms could combine together
the cause of the Evolution of the Earth is won. For
this pair of atoms are chemically "stronger " than any
of the atoms immediately surrounding them. Gradu
ally, by attraction or affinity, the primitive pair of
22

338 INVOLUTION.

atoms — like the first pair of savages — absorb a third
atom, and a fourth, and a fifth, until a " Family " of
atoms is raised up which possesses properties and
powers altogether new, and in virtue of which it holds
within its grasp the conquest and servitude of all
surrounding units. From this growing centre, attrac
tion radiates on every side, until a larger aggregate, a
family group — a Tribe — arises and starts a. more
powerful centre of its own. With every additional
atom added, the power as well as the complexity of the
combination increases. As the process goes on, after
endless vicissitudes, repulsions, rmd readjustment^
the changes become fewer and fewer, the conflict be
tween mass and mass dies down, the elements passing
through various stages of liquidity finally combine i»
the order of their affinities, arrange themselves in tha
order of their densities, and the solid earth is finished.
Now recall the names of the leading actors in thte
stupendous reformation. They are two in number^
mutual attraction and chemical affinity. Notice these
words— Attraction, Affinity. Notice that the great
formative forces of physical Evolution have psychical
names. It is idle to discuss whether there is or can be
any identity between the thing represented in the one
case and in the other. Obviously there cannot be.
Yet this does not exhaust the interest of the analogy.
In reality, neither here nor anywhere, have we any
knowledge whatever of what is actually meant by At
traction ; nor, in the one sphere or in the other, have
we even the means of approximating to such knowl
edge. To Newton himself the very conception of one
atom or one mass, attracting through empty space
another atom or another mass, put his mental powers

INVOLUTION. 339

to confusion. And as to the term Affinity, the most
recent Chemistry, finding it utterly unfathomable in
itself, confines its research at present to the investiga
tion of its modes of action. Science does not know
indeed what forces are ; it only classifies them. Here,
as in every deep recess of physical Nature, we are in
the presence of that which is metaphysical, that which
bars the way imperiously at every turn to a material
istic interpretation of the world. Yet name and
nature of force apart, what affinity even the grossest,
what likeness even the most remote, could one have
expected to trace between the gradual aggregation of
units of matter in the condensation of a weltering
star, and the slow segregation of men in the organi
zation of societies and nations ? However different the
agents, is there no suggestion that they are different
stages of a uniform process, different epochs of one
great historical enterprise, different results of a single
evolutionary law ?

Read from the root, we define this age-long process
by a word borrowed from the science of roots — a word
from the clay— Evolution. But read from the top,
Evolution is an impossible word to describe it. The
word is Involution. It is not a Stigmaria world, but
a Sigillaria world ; a spiritual, not a material universe.
Evolution is Advolution ; better, it is Revelation — the
phenomenal expression of the Divine, the progressive
realization of the Ideal, the Ascent of Love. Evolu
tion is a doctrine of unimaginable grandeur. That
Man should discern the prelude to his destiny in the
voices of the stars ; that the heart of Nature should be
a so human heart ; that its eternal enterprise should
be one with his ideals ; that even in the Universe

340 INVOLUTION.

beyond, the Reason which presides should have so
strange a kinship with that measure of it which he
calls his own; that he, an atom in that Universe,
should dare to feel himself at home within it, should
stand beside Immensity, Infinity, Eternity, unaf-
frighted and undismayed — these things bewilder Man
the more that they bewilder him so little.

Bat one verdict is possible as to the practical import
of this great doctrine, as to its bearing upon the in
dividual life and the future of the race. Evolution
has ushered a new hope into the world. The supreme
message of science to this age is that all Nature is on
the side of the man who tries to rise. Evolution,
development, progress are not only on her programme,
these are her programme. For all things are rising,
all worlds, all planets, all stars and suns. An ascend
ing energy is in the universe, and the whole moves on
with one mighty idea and anticipation. The aspira
tion in the human mind and heart is but the evolu
tionary tendency of the universe becoming conscious.
Darwin's great discovery, or the discovery which he
brought into prominence, is the same as Galileo's —
that the world moves. The Italian prophet said it
moves from west to east ; the English philosopher said
it moves from low to high. And this is the last and
most splendid contribution of science to the faith of
the world.

The discovery of a second motion in the earth has
come into the world of thought only in time to save
it from despair. As in the days of Galileo, there are
many even now who do not see that the world moves
• — men to whom the earth is but an endless plain, a
prison fixed in a purposeless universe where untried

IN VOL UTION. 341

prisoners await their unknown fate. It is not the
monotony of life which destroys men, but its point-
lessness ; they can bear its weight, Us meaninglessness
crushes them. But the same great revolution that
the discovery of the axial rotation of the earth effected
in the realm of physics, the announcement of the
doctrine of Evolution makes in the moral world.
Already, even in these days of its dawn, a sudden and
marvellous light has fallen upon earth and heaven.
Evolution is less a doctrine than a light; it is a light
revealing in the chaos of the past a perfect and grow
ing order, giving meaning even to the confusions of the
present, discovering through all the deviousness
around us the paths of progress, and Hashing its rays
already upon a coming goal. Men begin to see an
undeviating ethical purpose in this material world, a
tide, that from eternity has never turned, making for
perfectness. In that vast progression of Nature, that
vision of all things from the first of time moving from
low to high, from incompleteness to completeness,
from imperfection to perfection, the moral nature rec
ognizes in all its height and depth the eternal claim
upon itself. Wholeness, perfection, love— these have
always been required of Man. But never before on
the natural plane have they been proclaimed by voices
so commanding, or enforced by sanctions so great and
rational.

Is Nature henceforth to become the ethical teacher
of the world? Shall its aims become the guide, its
spirit the inspiration of Man's life? Is there no
ground here where all the faiths and all the creeds
may meet— nay, no ground for a final faith and a final
creed? If all men could see the inner meaning and

342 INVOLUTION.

aspiration of the natural order should we not find at
last a universal religion — a religion congruous with
the whole past of Man, at one with Nature, and with
a working creed which Science could accept ?

The answer is a simple one: We have it already.
There exists a religion which has anticipated all these
requirements — a religion which has been before the
world these eighteen hundred years, whose congruity
with Nature and with Man stands the tests at every
point. Up to this time no word has been spoken to
reconcile Christianity with Evolution, or Evolution
with Christianity. And why? Because the two are
one. What is Evolution? A method of creation.
What is its object? To make more perfect living
beings. What is Christianity? A method of crea
tion. What is its object? To make more perfect
living beings. Through what does Evolution work?
Through Love. Through what does Christianity
work? Through Love. Evolution and Christianity
have the same Author, the same end, the same spirit.
There is no rivalry between these processes. Chris
tianity struck into the Evolutionary process with no
noise or shock; it upset nothing of all that had
been done; it took all the natural foundations pre
cisely as it found them ; it adopted Man's body, mind,
and soul at the exact level where Organic Evolution
was at work upon them ; it carried on the building by
slow and gradual modifications ; and, through pro
cesses governed by rational laws, it put the finishing
touches to the Ascent of Man.

No man can run up the natural lines of Evolution
without coming to Christianity at the top. One holds
no brief to buttress Christianity in this way. But

INVOLUTION.

science has to deal with facts and with all facts, and
the facts and processes which have received the name
of Christian are the continuations of the scientific
order, as much the successors of these facts and the
continuations of these processes— clue allowances be
ing made for the differences in the planes, and for the
new factors which appear with each new plane — as
the facts and processes of biology are of those of the
mineral world. We land here, not from choice, but
from necessity. Christianity— it is not said any par
ticular form of Christianity— but Christianity, is the
Further Evolution.

" The glory of Christianity," urged Jowett, " is not
to be as unlike other religions as possible, but to
be their perfection and fulfilment." The divinity of
Christianity, it might be added, is not to be as unlike
Nature as possible, but to be its coronation ; the ful
filment of its promise ; the rallying point of its forces ;
the beginning not of a new end, but of an infinite
acceleration of the processes by which the end, eternal
from the beginning, was henceforth to be realized.
A religion which is Love and a Nature which is Love
can never but be one. The infinite exaltation in qual
ity is what the progressive revelation from the begin
ning has taught us to expect. Christianity, truly, has
its own phenomena, its special processes, its factors
altogether unique. But these do not excommunicate
it from God's order. They are in line with all that
has gone before, the latest disclosure of Environment.
Most strange to us and new, most miraculous and
supernatural when looked at from beneath, they
are the normal phenomena ol altitude, the revelation
natural to the highest height. While Evolution never

344 INVOLUTION.

deviates from its course, it assumes new developments
at every stage of the Ascent ; and here, as the last and
highest, these specializations, accelerations, modifica
tions, are most revolutionary of all. For the evolving
products are now no longer the prey and tool of the
Struggle for Life — the normal dynamic of the world's
youth. For them its appeal is vain; its force is
spent; a quicker road to progress has been found.
No longer driven from helow by the Animal Struggle,
they are drawn upward from above ; no longer com
pelled by hate or hunger, by rivalry or fear, they feel
impelled by Love; they realize the dignity reserved
for Man alone in evolving through Ideals. This de
velopment through Ideals, the Perfect Ideal through
which all others come, are the unique phenomena of
the closing act — unique not because they are out of
relation to what has gone before, but because the
phenomena of the summit are different from the
phenomena of the plain. Apart from these, and not
absolutely apart from these — for nothing in the world
can be absolutely apart from anything else, there is
nothing in Christianity which is not in germ in Nat-
ture. It is not an excrescence on Nature but its efflo
rescence. It is not a side track where a few enthu
siasts live impracticable lives on impossible ideals. It
is the main stream of history and of science, and the
only current set from eternity for the progress of the
world and the perfecting of a human race.

We began these chapters with the understanding
that Evolution is history, the scientific history of
the world. Christianity is history, a history of some
of the later steps in the Evolution of the world. The
continuity between them is a continuity of spirit;

INVOLUTION. 345

their forms are different, their forces confluent.
Christianity did not begin at the Christian era, it
is as old as Nature; did not drop like a bolt from
Eternity, came in the fulness of Time. The attempt
to prove an alibi for Christianity, to show that it was
in the skies till the Christian era opened, is as fatal to
its acceptance by Science as it is useless for defence to
Theology. What emerges from Nature as the final
result of Creation is the lower potentiality of the same
principle which is the instrument and end of the new
Creation.

The attempt of Science, on the other hand, to hold
itself aloof from the later phases of developments
which in their earlier stages it so devotes itself to
trace, is either ignorance or affectation. For that
Altruism which we found struggling to express itself
throughout the' whole course of Nature, what is it?
" Altruism is the new and very affected name for the
old familiar things which we used to call Charity,
Philanthropy, and Love." 1 Only by shutting its eyes
can Science evade the discovery of the roots of Chris
tianity in every province that it enters; and when it
does discover them, only by disguising words can it
succeed in disowning the relationship. There is noth
ing unscientific in accepting that relationship; there
is much that is unscientific in dishonoring it. The
Will behind Evolution is not dead; the heart of
Nature is not stilled. Love not only was ; it is ; it
moves; it spreads. To ignore the later and most
striking phases is to fail to see what the earlier pro
cess really was, • and to leave the ancient task of
Evolution historically incomplete. That Christian
1 Duke of Argyll, Edinburgh Review, April, 1894.

346 INVOLUTION.

development, social, moral, spiritual, which is going
on around us, is as real an evolutionary movement
as any that preceded it, and at least as capable of
scientific expression. A system founded on Self-
Sacrifice, whose fittest symbol is the Leaven, whose
organic development has its natural analogy in the
growth of a Mustard Tree, is not a foreign thing to the
Evolutionist ; and that prophet of the Kingdom of God
was no less the spokesman of Nature when he proclaimed
that the end of Man is " that which we had from the
beginning, that we love."

In the profoundest sense, this is scientific doctrine.
The Ascent of Man and of Society is bound up hence
forth with the conflict, the intensification, and the
diffusion of the Struggle for the Life of Others. This
is the Further Evolution, the page of history that lies
before us, the closing act of the drama of Man. The
Struggle may be short or long ; but by all scientific
analogy the result is sure. All the other Kingdoms
of Nature culminated; Evolution always attains;
always rounds off its work. It spent an eternity over
the earth, but finished it. It struggled for millen
niums to bring the Vegetable Kingdom up to the
Flowering Plants, and succeeded. In the Animal
Kingdom it never paused until the possibilities of
organization were exhausted in the Mammalia. Kindled
by this past, Man may surely say, "I shall arrive."
The Further Evolution must go on, the Higher King
dom come — first the blade, where we are to-day ; then
the ear, where we shall be to-morrow ; then the full
corn in the ear, which awaits our children's children,
and which we live to hasten.

FINIS.

:BRARY
EGE

QRONTO

3RARY
EGE

QH 368 .075 1898 SMC
Drummond, Henry,
The Lowell lectures on the
ascent of man 47093405